The Shadow Proclamation
by Maddy77
Summary: A demon from their father's past shows up on Ellen's doorstep, claiming to want to help the Winchesters. But who is the Doctor, and what is he keeping from the brothers? Set DW mid Season 2, SPN mid Season 3.
1. Chapter 1

Sam Winchester's visions were not always easy to decode. But they were rarely surrealist.

As he sat on his bed, Dean already getting a glass of water for him, the agony had begun to fade. He rubbed his temples to help the process along, as he started to try to piece together what he had seen. It didn't make sense. It usually made so much sense. Demon shows up, person gets killed was the typical formula. None of that happened this time, but he felt such a sense of foreboding that it made his stomach clench.

"I thought your visions were gone," Dean said over the sound of the tap running.

"They were," Sam said, and winced. He didn't have visions anymore. Not since they'd killed the yellow-eyed demon. This was the first in months.

"So what did you see?" Dean asked, handing Sam the glass. Sam took it gratefully and chugged the whole thing, ignoring the metallic motel tap water taste. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, and shook his head vigorously.

"Man, it was weird," Sam said slowly. Dean watched him, his eyes bright and intent. "I don't...I don't really know what happened in it. It was at Ellen's, so that's definitely where we need to go."

"Ellen? Jo? Are they okay?" Dean asked urgently. Sam nodded, cracking his neck to try to relieve some of the pressure, and Dean relaxed the smallest bit. "So what happened?"

"Okay. So I saw this...thing. Looked like a man. _Definitely _not a man," Sam said, his eyes a little glassy at the memory. He shivered. "He kept...changing. I saw like almost a dozen different people. Always men. But I couldn't figure out what he looked like—old, young, tall, short, thin, big, hair all different colors...I mean, Dean, I couldn't pick this guy out of a line-up. He'd be the whole line-up."

"A shifter?" Dean asked.

Sam thought about it, then shook his head. "No. He was just..._flickering _through all of the forms. I couldn't make any of them out too well. He didn't stay in any of them long enough. But in my vision I don't think anybody else saw him like that." Sam took a deep breath, and then continued: "He had Jo."

Dean bolted up. "You just said that Jo and Ellen were okay," he said, accusingly. He grabbed his bag and Sam's, throwing Sam's over to him. "You can tell me the rest on the way," he said, "because we're leaving _now_."

Sam didn't argue. He didn't have the energy, and anyway, Dean was right. They needed to go and they needed to go fast. As they grabbed their few possessions that they had brought into the hotel, Sam kept talking. "He wasn't hurting her, Dean. He just had her by the arm, like he was..._scolding _her." He shut the motel room door behind him, then hurried to catch up with Dean, who was booking it for the parking lot. He had to raise his voice a little for Dean to hear him over the distance he'd put between them. "He let her go when Ellen told him to, and I didn't see him move to hurt either one of them. Ellen seemed to know who he was, and she said something about his new face. She had her shotgun out."

"Maybe your freaky pay-per-view gave you the wrong clip," Dean suggested darkly, throwing his bag into the Impala. Sam did the same, and they both climbed into the car. "Maybe he started throwing down after you were done watching."

Sam fastened his seatbelt and shrugged, uncomfortable, as Dean started the car and peeled out of the lot. When he didn't say anything for a minute, Dean looked over at him. "Well? What happened after that? Was that it?"

Sam tried to speak but couldn't find the words.

Some of the anger left Dean's face, replaced by worry. "That wasn't it," he said. "Sammy, tell me. You can tell me. What happened next?"

Sam shuddered as the vision came flooding back to him.

_It was Ellen's new rent house, where she'd been staying since the Roadhouse was destroyed. Tiny, shabby, on the wrong side of town. The man stood in the doorway, and released Jo's arm as the vision cleared._

_Still rapidly cycling through his faces, the man stopped talking to Ellen. He paused, looking puzzled—though Sam could barely parse out his expression from the blur of features—and then looked up at him._

_Up. At _Sam.

"_How are you doing that?" he asked, frowning. Ignoring Ellen's queries of who he was talking to, he turned fully to face Sam, pulling a silver tube out of his pocket. The tip of it shone blue, and he pointed it at Sam. Sam felt a thrilling sensation in his stomach. "You shouldn't be able to do that." He glanced down at the instrument in his hand, and his eyebrows rose. He looked back at Sam with the barest hint of a smile, and for just a split second his face stilled: spiky brown hair, rectangular glasses, wide brown eyes. "That is interesting. Ellen, did you know the Winchester boy could do that?" He turned back to Ellen, as though they were old friends, Sam apparently forgotten. Ellen grabbed Jo and stepped slightly in front of her daughter._

_And Sam snapped out of it._

"He _talked _to you?" exclaimed Dean, veering a little off the road in his surprise. Sam gripped onto the door handle, but he didn't say anything. Dean was freaked out, but he had a right to be, and there was no place on Earth that was safer than the Impala with Dean behind the wheel. Sure enough Dean righted the car, but stared at Sam, incredulous. "Sammy, that ain't possible."

"I _know_," Sam said. "What I'm seeing is the future. I'm not..._there _for it. He couldn't have talked to me. But he did. And he knew my name, and Ellen's name...Dean, I've got a really bad feeling about this. This is a new level of weird."

"Not like there's any getting out of it," Dean said. "We can't let Ellen and Jo deal with this on their own. That thing hurts 'em..."

"I know," said Sam quietly.

They drove in silence for a while. The highway was blank and featureless as it always was, but the immensity of their isolation seemed to hit Sam like it didn't, usually. It wasn't like they hadn't driven these roads countless times before since he'd started this stupid adventure, but right now...it was because his head wasn't safe anymore.

He frowned at the thought, which had risen by itself. But it was right. That's how he felt: like his head wasn't a safe place anymore. That creature had invaded it so easily. And Sam didn't even know what he was. He could be anywhere, hiding behind any of the trees that lined the highway, waiting to pop out in front of the Impala, sending Sam and his brother careening off the road to pick through Sam's brain in person.

Sam, his mouth not asking his brain for permission, whispered, "He scares me, Dean."

Dean didn't turn, but Sam could see that his knuckles were white against the steering wheel, his expression one of false hardness with concern underneath. "You don't scare easy, Sam," his brother said. "If you got a bad feeling about this, we need to be careful. Is it because he saw you in your vision?"

Sam shook his head, and reached under his seat for a dagger kept there. He took it out and gripped it, feeling its weight and its realness. He felt better with a weapon in his hands. "Yes, and no," he replied. "I mean, that freaked me out. But it's more than just that. He's powerful. He didn't just see me, just talk to me, he...affected me. I felt it when he pointed that thing at me. And Dean..." He laughed a little, but there was no humor in it. "Dean, if he'd wanted me to stay in the vision, I don't think I could have woken up from it. Don't ask me how I know that. I just feel it."

Dean didn't say anything to that. They drove on, and as Kansas stretched out behind them and started to turn into Nebraska, Sam couldn't stop thinking of the vision. Usually, even when what he saw was terrible (as it usually was), he could feel the horror fade very quickly. Whatever was happening that he'd seen, it was his job to stop it. And that gave him purpose, gave him a reason to snap out of it. This time was different. This time, that icy feeling in his stomach wouldn't go away. That feeling he felt every time, but that hadn't lingered since he'd gotten used to the fact that he saw these things.

He thought about that split second where he was able to see one of the faces that the thing wore. He felt himself having a hard time not saying man, but he knew that whatever this thing was, it was not human. There was something about him that set Sam's teeth on edge, something about him that said _predator_. Once he'd felt the thing's eyes on him, he felt frozen. Like if the demon wanted him there, he would stay. Even though that was impossible.

He picked up his father's journal and started rifling through it, hoping for something, anything that might explain this. Vampires, werewolves, demons of all types, minor gods...all of that was in the journal. Everything they'd come up against, their father had either taught them about or had left them clues in his journal. But this was outside of even what twistedly passed as familiar to the Winchesters.

Dean picked up his cell phone and started dialing. Sam looked over, and Dean said, hitting the speakerphone, "I'm calling them. If that thing is on its way I want Ellen prepared." Sam nodded, and they both waited for the ringing to stop.

"Hello." Sam almost wept at the sound of Ellen's voice, but kept it together.

"Ellen, it's Dean. Sam just had a vision, and you and Jo are in danger. Get out of the house now and we'll meet you wherever you tell us to."

A long moment passed. "Ellen?" Dean said. "Are you there?"

A small laugh. "You said Sam had a vision about me and Jo?" Ellen asked.

"Yeah, that's what I said. Now get out of there—"

"Jo's been missing for a week." Dean fell silent, and Sam stared at the phone. "So if Sam had a vision where she comes back, I want to be here. What did he see?"

Dean handed the phone to Sam, his eyes distant as he stared out the windshield. Sam took it in fumbling hands and said, "Ellen, it's Sam. I don't...it wasn't a normal vision. I don't know what the thing was, but Jo was safe. It was something you knew. Not human, but...it looked human. It kept changing faces, bodies. But I don't think you saw that, in the vision."

He heard a sharp intake of breath. "It looked like a man? Did you hear him speak? Was he British?"

Sam frowned. "Yeah. Yeah, he did have a British accent. It did," he corrected himself. "Ellen, do you know what this thing is?"

There was silence over the phone for a moment. "I'm not sure. But I have my guess. And if I'm right, and he's coming, then the two of you are not safe. Don't come here, Sammy, I'm not kidding."

"We're not leaving you alone with whatever that thing is," Dean snapped. "Whatever it is, we've seen worse, and we're on our way with lots of firepower."

"You _haven't _seen worse, and nothing you have in your trunk is going to kill him," said Ellen, her voice firm. "Believe me, boys, if it's who I think it is, you're not ready to deal with something like this."

Dean started to argue, but Sam held up his hand. "Okay, Ellen," he said, gesturing to cut off Dean's protestations. "We'll stay put. Call us in twenty-four hours to let us know you're okay, all right? That vision creeped me out and I want to know that thing didn't hurt you."

Ellen paused, and then said, "Okay, boys. I will. You stay safe. Sammy, if you get any more visions about that man, call me again." She hung up.

"What the hell, Sammy?" Dean shouted. "_We'll stay put? _What are you thinking?"

"That arguing with her was pointless, but that it didn't matter because there's no way we're turning around," Sam replied. "Keep driving, idiot."

Dean was silent for a moment, and then laughed. "Okay, little brother. Good move. Now, here's what's bothering me. Ellen knew what the thing you saw was, but she didn't want to say. If Ellen knew, no way Dad didn't. So why isn't there anything in his journal? Why didn't he mention anything about something like this?"

"What's bothering _me _is that Jo's been missing for a week, and I see this thing in my vision hauling her into their house like he's about to ground her," Sam said. "Even if he was the one who kidnapped her to begin with, why would he bring her back home? Unharmed?"

"Maybe he wanted Ellen to watch him kill her," Dean said grimly.

"No, I thought about that, too, but he just...let her go," Sam said. "When Ellen told him to. And Ellen had a shotgun out and trained on him. Why would he do that?"

Dean shrugged. "Don't know. Can't say I'm really interested in figuring out his motivation. What I want to do is go in, waste this thing, get a drink, and forget this happened."

The sun had begun to rise as the neighborhood the house was in appeared on the horizon. They hadn't stopped, and neither of them had slept almost at all the night before, so they were ragged. Still, Sam couldn't feel much but relief as they pulled up in the driveway.

They parked the Impala and walked up to the front door. Dean rapped impatiently, shouting, "Ellen? Open up!"

They heard the locks coming undone, and the opening doors revealed a very unhappy Ellen standing in the doorway. Her hair was bedraggled, and dark circles under her eyes spoke of a week of sleepless nights. She looked at them with a combination of disappointment, anger, and fear. "I told you boys not to come," she said, her voice flat.

"Couldn't be helped," Dean said with a winning smile. "It's not here yet, is it?"

"No." Ellen stepped back and ushered them in. "Get in here fast. And I want you in the back. Sammy, what time of day was it in your vision?"

"It was day, morning, I think," Sam replied.

"Soon, then," Ellen murmured. She made one more sweep of the yard with her eyes, then closed and locked the door. She turned to them with hard eyes. "Stay in the back. I am not asking you, Dean Winchester, I am _telling you_. I don't care what you hear, you stay in the back. I am not having you hurt, not in my house."

"I'm not lettin' that thing hurt you," Dean retorted, pulling his pistol out from the back of his jeans.

"He won't hurt me," Ellen said softly, putting her hand on Dean's wrist. He took the hint and grudgingly put away the gun. "He won't hurt Jo, either. But I can't promise he won't hurt the two of you. So promise me—_promise me _you won't come out while he's here."

"Ellen, what _is _this thing?" Sam asked. "What kind of demon is he?"

Ellen looked away, suddenly looking years older. "Boys, I wish I could tell you," she said, "but you are just not ready yet. You have to trust me when I say that everybody will be okay as long as you hide."

Dean started to argue, but Sam, watching Ellen's eyes, put a hand on his arm. "Okay, and I mean it this time," he said. "We'll do what you say."

"Sammy—" Dean started, but Sam shook his head. He quieted, unhappy but compliant.

Ellen nodded. "Right. You get into the back. When he's—"

They all stopped at a sound outside, from the back yard, like wind rushing and gears creaking. Ellen paled. "He's here. Get, _now_."

Sam grabbed Dean's arm, and they rushed into the kitchen, closing the door behind them but sitting next to it so they could hear what was happening in the living room.

"This is nuts," Dean hissed. "We can't leave them out there with—"

"Ellen knows what she's doing," Sam whispered. "We have to trust her."

Dean started to reply, but Sam shushed him as the back doors opened. They heard Ellen's shotgun as she readied it.

"Ah, Nebraska!" Sam froze at the sound of that voice. "Never get much of a chance to visit Nebraska. Not a whole lot of call for my services here. But I do enjoy popping by when I get the opportunity. Always good to see an old friend, isn't it, Ellen?"

"Jo, are you all right?" Ellen asked, her voice studiously even.

"I'm fine, Mom, I promise." Jo's voice trembled just the smallest bit.

"Funny story," the demon said casually. "I found her in a warehouse a couple of towns away trying to hack the head off of a juvenile Blathereen! Probably shouldn't let her out of your sight until you're sure she's not going to run off and provoke an _incident_."

Sam met Dean's eyes, and he saw that his brother heard it, too. The demon might sound flippant, but there was a dark undercurrent of anger in his voice. It made the hair on Sam's arms stand up.

"Let her go," Ellen ordered.

"Of course," the demon said, and the Winchesters heard Jo running to her mother. The demon sighed. "Really, Ellen, a shotgun? You know how I feel about guns."

"Makes me feel better," Ellen said shortly. "Might not kill you, but it's got some stopping power. But I guess something got you: you got a new face."

"Yes, I did!" The demon sounded pleased—like he was flattered she'd noticed. "Bit of trouble aboard Satellite Five, but that's neither here nor there. Do you like it?"

Ellen snorted. "Very nice. Now get out."

"You know I can't. First of all, _we _need to have a discussion about your daughter," the demon said, his voice darkening again. "I've told you time and time again how dangerous it is for her to hunt. That Blathereen did nothing to her, or anyone. They're a harmless people. _And _I _specifically _told the two of you to let me deal with the Slitheen. I am, by the way, doing you a kindness by assuming the only reason Jo would have attacked that Blathereen is because she thought he was Slitheen." He paused, and then added, "This would be a very different conversation, if I thought otherwise."

"Don't you threaten my daughter," Ellen snapped, and Sam could hear the ringing tension in her voice. She was afraid.

"I'm not threatening her," the demon said coldly. "I'm warning both of you. There've been innocent casualties in this war of yours, and others are beginning to notice. Just like twelve years ago. You don't want that again, I promise you—" The demon's voice stopped. Sam's heart did, too. "How are you doing that?"

"Who are you talking to?" Ellen asked nervously.

Sam gripped Dean's arm. "This is what he said to me, in my vision," he breathed. "This is when he was looking at me."

"You shouldn't be able to do that," the demon continued. A high-pitched buzzing sound, and then: "That is interesting. Ellen, did you know the Winchester boy could do that?"

A shuffling sound—Ellen pushing Jo behind her, Sam remembered. "Do what?"

"He was just—nevermind, it's not important."

"Why are you here?" Ellen demanded.

The demon chuckled. "What, bringing your daughter safely home and preventing a war with Raxacoricofallapatorious isn't enough of a reason to stop by?" Ellen said nothing, and he sighed again. "You're right, Ellen. I need to find John Winchester."

Dean jumped as though electrocuted, and Sam put a hand on his arm.

Ellen laughed dryly. "You need to recalibrate your ship, Doctor. John's dead. You just missed him."

There was no sound for a minute. Finally, the demon—the Doctor—said, his voice very quiet, "I'm sorry."

"Thanks. Leave," Ellen ordered.

"If he's gone, I need to find his sons," the Doctor said. "At least the eldest is following in his father's footsteps, yes? He was a loyal boy."

"I don't know where the Winchesters are," Ellen said. Maybe just a hair too quickly. Sam winced.

The Doctor paused. "Ellen, lying is unbecoming," he said, his voice soft and dangerous. "I'm trying to—oh. They're here, aren't they?"

"Doctor, you leave them alone," Ellen cried, and Sam heard the Doctor's footsteps as well as Ellen's, approaching the kitchen. He and Dean clambered to their feet, and Dean pulled out a pistol.

The footfalls stopped at the door, and they heard the Doctor say quietly, "I'm trying to help, Ellen. I don't want to see anyone hurt." There was a silence, and then he said, "I understand why you've never trusted me. But it's not too late to start."

The door to the kitchen opened.

The face that Sam had seen for that split second was before him. The Doctor was fully humanoid, tall and thin, wearing a blue pinstripe suit and a long, brown coat. Thick-rimmed rectangular glasses perched on his nose. The silver instrument Sam had seen in his vision was still in the Doctor's hand. And the Doctor's eyes were wide, and focused right beyond Sam's shoulder.

Dean fired his gun at almost exactly the same moment that the Doctor depressed the button on the instrument.

* * *

Author's note: Here's the truth about this story, guys. I've been struggling with finishing it. I'm about seven chapters in and losing steam. I'm posting it so that hopefully I can get my courage back up to wrap it up, because I know where it's going, I just can't get it there. You guys have been fantastic to me in the past, so encouragement would be greatly appreciated in this case, as would constructive criticism! Much love.

And of course, standard disclaimers apply: I own neither "Supernatural" nor "Doctor Who", nor really much but my abiding love for the creative teams for both shows.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who commented, favorited, alerted, and C2'd! I especially appreciated the reviews. Let me know what's exciting for you, what's working or not—it'll help me write the last few chapters.

I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the first!

* * *

Sam didn't know exactly what had happened, but none of it was good.

Dean was on his knees, clutching his bloodied hand. The pistol had backfired, and Dean's hand was a mess of blood and burns.

The Doctor was on the ground. Dean's gun had backfired, but not before it fired right, and the bullet had gone clean through the Doctor's right shoulder. It was an ugly injury, and so Sam was extremely surprised when the Doctor sat right up, albeit slowly.

He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down over his shoulder, touching the injury delicately, and hissed. "Ah, that's a bad one," he said, sounding mostly disappointed. He looked behind himself and saw the gory bullet. "Least it went straight through." He rotated his shoulder a few times, and then looked to Dean. He stood up and fished something out of his pocket, and approached Dean. "Sorry about that," he said, sounding sincere. "Guns make me panicky."

"Get the hell away from me," Dean said, his voice rough. The Doctor ignored him and crouched down, opening the small container that he had retrieved from his pocket. He took Dean's hand, resisting his attempts to pull away (_stronger than he looks_, Sam thought), and spread some sort of ointment along the wounds.

"If you'd stop struggling this would hurt less," the Doctor scolded, giving Dean an irritable look over his glasses. "It's just medicated gel. This type won't really be accessible to humans for another couple of centuries, but I happened to have some in my pocket, so lucky you."

Sam stood by the wall, in the corner, in an almost unconscious attempt to hide himself. It didn't work. The Doctor looked up from Dean, and caught Sam's eye. He studied him for a moment, without speaking, continuing to rub the gel into Dean's mangled hand. "Nice trick there, earlier," the Doctor said after an unbearable length of time. "You weren't projecting yourself from back here. How long ago did that happen, for you?"

"Late last night," Sam said, not sure why he was answering. "About six hours ago."

"You don't have to tell this thing _anything_, Sammy," Dean shouted, gritting his teeth against the pain in his hand. Sam stole a glance at the injury, and felt a little cold as he realized that it was healing. Already healing.

The Doctor looked offended as he dabbed a bit of the gel into his shoulder, wincing slightly. "_Thing?_" he echoed. "You wound me. Well," he added with a small, ironic smile as he pulled his shirt back over the gunshot wound, "in several ways. Right. I'm called the Doctor, but you knew that because both of you heard everything Ellen and I said in the other room. So I suppose small talk is unnecessary at this juncture, isn't it?" He closed the gel's container and tucked it back in his pocket. Sam wondered why the container, which, while small, was oddly-shaped, didn't distort the line of the coat any. It was as though it disappeared in the pocket.

He shook his head and looked up to see the Doctor watching him. "How do you know us?" Sam asked. "How did you know our dad?"

The Doctor hesitated, and he studied the floor for a moment. "Your father and I met. Twelve years ago."

"That's crap," spat Dean. "I'd remember that. We both would."

The Doctor exchanged a glance with Ellen, who turned away. Jo put her arms around her mother, but looked as confused as the Winchesters. When Ellen said nothing, the Doctor said, "We decided that it was best that you children didn't remember what happened."

Sam turned to Ellen, speechless. There were tears in her eyes. "You were so young," she whispered. "We all thought it was the right thing to do. The things you saw..." She trailed off, shaking her head. Jo had stepped away, looking nauseated.

"You let some demon wipe our memory?" Jo demanded. "Mom!"

Ellen looked sharply at the Doctor, and barked out a laugh. "You're going to let me field this one?" she asked harshly. "No offense at the name calling?"

The Doctor put his hands in his pockets. "I respected your wishes twelve years ago," he said quietly. "I'll respect your wishes today."

"If you want to respect my wishes, get the hell out of my house," Ellen snapped. "You've done enough damage here."

"If I leave, and things continue the way they've been, you're asking me to condemn your daughter and John's boys to death." The kindness had left the Doctor's face, and Sam shivered to see his expression. "I've done things I'm not proud of for you and your family, Ellen. But I will not do this."

"Then don't pretend this is about respect, or about anything but a power trip," spat Ellen. Sam could see her hands trembling, despite her harsh tone.

The Doctor paused, and a stillness took over his face that was even more frightening than his anger. It was the expression of a man who'd made up his mind, and who was beyond emotional appeal. "I am doing my duty under the Shadow Proclamation, Ellen Harvelle," he said quietly. "In fact, I am doing more than my duty. I could arrest Jo now and bring her up without another word. If I wait long enough, I guarantee I'll have to come back for Dean and Samuel."

Sam turned to his brother, hoping for some kind of explanation. Dean's face was livid, and Sam knew it wasn't blood loss that was causing it. "Dean?" he said softly, crossing to him. "What is it?"

"The Shadow Proclamation," Dean said. "Dad wrote about that in his journal."

The Doctor heard them, regardless of their low tones, and his head snapped towards them. "He did what?" he asked.

"What did it say?" asked Sam.

Dean hesitated. "Didn't say much. Just that it was some kind of, some sort of council of demons. Specifically set up to find and kill Hunters. He never mentioned it to me, not out loud, but it was there in his journal. I never thought much of it. Though now that I think about it, I should have." Dean frowned. "Weird."

The Doctor seemed to relax at Dean's explanation. "Well, that's not quite right," he said, and there was something under his words—a relief and a sadness. He glanced at Ellen. "I thought the deal was that none of you would mention it."

"I didn't know he wrote about it," Ellen said defensively. "But that journal was his. He didn't expect to leave the boys. Not yet."

Dean grew still as she spoke, and Sam shot him a sympathetic look. Ellen couldn't know how open a wound that was for Dean, but an unconscious jab hurt as bad as a conscious one. But beyond that, she was wrong, or lying. Their father had left that journal for them before his death. Whatever he'd written in it, he'd meant for them to know.

The Doctor nodded and turned to Sam and Dean, his eyes somber. "I am sorry to hear about your father," he said. And again, like with Dean earlier, he sounded truly sorry. "He was a good man, and he always did what he believed was right. There aren't many men like that. The world is poorer without him."

"Damn right," Dean said, but his voice was soft, and Sam could tell that he was fighting back grief.

"Look, I kind of feel like we've been confused enough for one day," said Sam, "and I'm just wondering if we could, you know, lay down some groundwork, since our memories were wiped."

The Doctor coughed and rubbed the back of his neck, in a manner that Sam was surprised to recognize as awkward. "Ah, well. See, there's the trouble."

Ellen interjected, and while the Doctor looked put out, he was silent. "Your dad and Bill and I did what we did twelve years ago for a reason, boys," she said firmly. "You may not agree with it or be happy about it, but I stand by our decision. There are things you don't need to know."

"We are _adults_ now, Ellen," Sam exclaimed, incredulous, "and we have a right to know whatever you and Bill and Dad knew. You don't get to decide what information we can have. Dad's gone...whatever he thought he could protect us from, he can't, now."

Ellen strode up to the Doctor, ignoring Sam, and shoved her finger right in his face. He looked down at her in surprise. "Don't you dare tell them, Doctor," she hissed. "It's hard enough as it is. You know it is."

They stayed like that for a moment, Ellen rigid and glowering, the Doctor calm and pensive, their eyes never leaving each other's. Finally, the Doctor sighed heavily and lowered his eyes. "I know," he said.

Ellen seemed satisfied at that. "So what happens now?" she asked. "I know we aren't lucky enough for you to just leave us in peace. And if you're here that means something's wrong, and it isn't just Jo mixing up Slitheen and Blitheen."

"Blathereen," the Doctor said, sounding pained at Ellen's ignorance. "And really, it's not that hard to tell them apart: their linguistic markers and sociocultural accoutrements are very distinct, but that aside, no. You're not getting rid of me that easily. Because I've been...sent...to keep an eye on the Winchesters."

"Like hell you will," exclaimed Dean. That was, apparently, the last straw. "Come on, Sammy, we're leaving."

Sam stared at Dean like he was speaking Klingon. He thought that the Doctor would just let them _leave_? Just like that? He looked from his brother to the demon, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Sam walked slowly over to his brother, not taking his eyes off of the Doctor.

The Doctor shook his head and released a weary sigh. "I'm not going to stop you," he said, "but I have to warn you. One way or another, I have to watch you. If you let me come with you, I can keep you from trouble. If you don't..." He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "...I can't guarantee what will happen."

"Is that a threat?" Dean demanded, reaching for a knife that Sam knew was in his boot. Sam's heart began to race.

The Doctor sighed again and ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up in a gravity-defying way. "No, it's not a threat," he said, exasperated. Dean stopped reaching for the knife, straightening. "I'm not threatening you. I'm trying to help you. But if you don't want my help, I won't force it on you. So go."

"Just like that?" asked Sam, his voice quieter than he'd intended.

The Doctor turned to him curiously. He peered at him through his glasses, studying him. Sam felt exposed, like he could see right through him. "Yes," the Doctor finally replied. "Just like that." His voice took on a bright, curious note as he added, "I won't keep you against your will, Samuel."

Sam felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. _I won't keep you against your will_. Was that deliberate? Did he know how Sam had felt during the vision? He couldn't. He also couldn't have spoken to Sam during his vision, but he did that, too. Who was to say what the Doctor could and couldn't do?

"Let's go, Sammy," Dean said again, heading for the door. Sam shot one last, nervous look at the Doctor, Ellen, and Jo, before following his brother.

The light was blinding. It felt like they'd been in there for ages; Sam had forgotten it was still day. Once they were far enough from the door that he didn't think they'd be overheard, Sam hissed, "I thought you didn't want to leave Ellen and Jo alone with that thing."

"Ellen said he won't hurt them," Dean said shortly. "We have to trust her." Sam frowned at his words being thrown back at him, but said nothing.

The tires of the Impala screeched protest as they drove away, in silence for a long while. Dean, apparently unable to keep quiet for any longer, broke the silence. "I don't like that thing, Sammy," he growled. "He gives me the freakin' creeps."

"Yeah, that's what I said," muttered Sam. He glanced at his brother. "You think he's gonna follow us?"

Dean scoffed. "He can try," he said, "but it's not like we're not good at avoiding the authorities."

Sam smiled half-heartedly, but it faded quickly. "I don't know, man. I'm not so sure. Ellen was freaked out. And he seemed pretty confident that he could let us go and find us again."

"Yeah, well, the bigger they are, yadda yadda," Dean replied dismissively.

Sam thought briefly about arguing with Dean, trying to make him take this more seriously, but quickly rejected it as unlikely to work. And he suspected that underneath the bravado, Dean was as worried as he was. "So where are we going?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "I figure we'll drive 'til we hit a motel that doesn't look too shady, then find a case," he said.

Sam nodded. "Okay," he said. No point in arguing. Dean, ultimately, had the wheel.

It took them a couple of hours and one pit stop for gas and beef jerky (nothing for Sam, thanks), but eventually they found a motel. They climbed out of the car, grabbing their bags, and headed inside.

"Afternoon!" the girl behind the counter said brightly. Sam smiled at her wearily, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Dean giving her a once-over. He shook his head, elbowing Dean in the side. Dean grunted and glared, but started to behave himself.

"We could use a room for a couple of nights," said Sam, arriving at the counter.

"Sure, let me see what we have open," said the girl, and Sam tried to place her accent. Brooklyn, maybe. Weird to hear it out here in the boonies. She ducked under the counter and came up with a pair of keys. "Room 216, down to your right. How many nights can I put you down for?"

"Three, but we might need more, if that's okay," Sam replied.

"Yeah, no problem," she said, smiling sweetly. Sam found himself grateful for the smile, for its authenticity, and smiled back. "How're you planning to pay?"

Dean handed her a card and they worked out the payment while Sam leaned against the wall, suddenly exhausted. He didn't think they'd gone far enough. And they certainly hadn't taken enough back roads. If the Doctor was following them, they'd made it really easy for him. He startled when Dean punched his arm. "Come on, let's head up," he said. Sam cracked his neck and as he was tilting it he saw the girl grinning at him. He smiled back, then quickly looked away and followed Dean into the motel room.

"Cute, huh?" Dean said, his tone a mockery of the word _casual_. Sam rolled his eyes dramatically, and Dean burst out laughing. "Come on, dude, I saw you lookin' with those puppy-dog eyes of yours! She's smokin'. Can't be helped."

"It was...just nice to see somebody smile like that," Sam retorted stubbornly. "Like she's really _happy_."

"Are we gonna have a moment, right now?" Dean asked. "Because I'm too tired for a moment, and all I wanna do is grab a paper and find a place to eat."

Sam nodded, tossing his bag onto the floor by the bed that Dean hadn't already claimed. He paused, then dug into it, pulling out their dad's journal. He flipped quickly to the back.

He found it after a moment of searching. It wasn't the well-researched, carefully-written and illustrated entry that his dad usually made. It said:

_Shadow Proclamation_

_Collective of demons(?) designed to hunt find/try Hunters. Located in separate dimension. Capable of transporting humans across dimensions. Powerful locating spells. More than one type of demon. Some humans (?)._

And last in larger, heavier handwriting,

_DON'T Trust the Dr._

Sam's stomach dropped. The _DON'T_ was in blue ink, while the rest was in black, like his dad had changed his mind after writing it the first time. He wondered what had happened, that the Doctor had gained his father's trust and then lost it.

"Feel like a burger, Sammy?" Dean asked, and Sam jumped at his voice.

A thought occurred to him. "Lemme see your hand, Dean," he said. Dean frowned and held his hand out, and as he did so, his eyes widened.

"Damn," Dean whispered.

It was like the gun hadn't blown up. His hand was reddened and warm where the wounds had been, but the skin had knitted itself back together and the burns were gone. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Sam would never have believed that Dean had sustained such a painful wound only a few hours ago. "I almost forgot," Dean said, turning his hand over in amazement.

Sam tried to shake it off, and said, "Okay, so now look what I found in Dad's journal." He handed the book to Dean, pointing at the passage for the Shadow Proclamation.

Dean whistled low. "Definitely don't remember the part about the Doc," he said after a moment. "So he did know Dad, and it had something to do with this Shadow Proclamation. What did the Doctor say about it?"

"He said he was doing his duty under the Shadow Proclamation," Sam recalled slowly. "And that plus this doesn't sound good."

"Well, Dad did cross out _hunt_. That's probably a good sign," Dean offered. "But what did he mean _try_?"

Sam shook his head and shrugged, clueless. Dean sighed and sat heavily on his bed, reaching under the lamp stand and grabbing a telephone book. Sam gave him a quizzical look, and he said, "Well, demon collective or no, I'm still freakin' hungry."

As Dean began his search for the perfect cheeseburger anew, Sam lay back on his bed and thought. Thought about this Shadow Proclamation that they knew so little about. Thought about the fact that his dad had withheld information from them that might be so vital now. And thought about the Doctor, and Dean's hand.

The Doctor had fixed it. Why? If he was someone who was not to be trusted, why would he bother to fix Dean's hand?

And if he fixed Dean's hand, what else might he be able to fix?

Sam glanced at Dean, following the lines he was reading in the phone book with his finger, trying to judge restaurants by their names. He smiled, just a little bit. His brother. His stupid, arrogant, self-sacrificing brother. Who had less than a year to live, thanks to Sam.

If the Doctor was really part of this powerful demon collective, maybe he knew somebody who could help get Dean out of his deal. Maybe that somebody was him. Maybe, if they kept him happy, he could save Dean.

Sam's brow furrowed. Dean was never going to go for it. He hadn't when they'd met Ruby, and he wouldn't now. Especially now that he'd seen their dad's note about not trusting the Doctor. But Sam wasn't sure that was enough to not give it a shot at all. Because for whatever else the Doctor was, he was powerful. Maybe powerful enough to do it.

"I give up," Dean announced, slamming the phone book down on the lamp stand. Sam jumped sitting, and Dean grinned at him. "Guess we'll just have to ask your girlfriend where to get a good burger," he added.

Sam groaned. "Dude, let it go," he begged, but knew that it was no use. Dean grabbed his wallet, a gun, and a knife, and took off downstairs. Sam followed him quickly, if only to do damage control.

When they arrived at the counter, the girl was sorting some papers, looking irritable. She muttered something under her breath as she evened out a stack of papers by banging the end against the counter, rolling her eyes as though rehearsing an argument with somebody. When Dean cleared his throat she jumped and put the papers down. "Oh! Didn't see you, sorry!" she exclaimed, smiling in embarrassment. "What can I do for you?"

"We're lookin' for the best burger in town," replied Dean, cranking his charm up to eleven. Sam looked pained. "Happen to know where it is?"

The girl's grin slowly turned genuine. "Actually, I can do you one better," she said. Dean raised his eyebrows. "If you can wait about five minutes, I'm off shift, and I'll _show_ you where to get the best burger in town."

Dean shot Sam a look that could only be described as _gleeful_. "We can wait," Dean said, barely keeping that same glee out of his voice. The girl gave a cute little smile, her tongue sticking out just the smallest amount, and gestured for them to have a seat.

They did, and sure enough, in just a few minutes a disgruntled-looking young man came to take the girl's place. She grinned, told him good-bye, and then looked expectantly at the Winchesters.

"I assume you have a car," she said. It was like she already knew Dean.

Dean's eyes grew wide, and he nodded, grinning ear to ear. "Oh yeah," he said. "I've got a car."


	3. Chapter 3

The girl's name was Jackie, she said after they introduced themselves, and yes, she was from Brooklyn, that was a good guess. She was taking a year off of school and decided to travel west, and made a pit stop here to earn some money to continue her trip. She was studying physics at Brooklyn College. Dean looked surprised, and she'd laughed at him, asking if she didn't look the type. Dean stammered something and changed the subject.

"So where is this burger place?" he asked.

In the passenger seat, where Sam had insisted she sit, Jackie bit her lip, thinking. "Take this right at the light," she said, "then take the second left. Turn right at the gas station and it'll be on the left, on the corner one block down; you can park on the street."

The town passed them, blurry as it was given how fast Dean was driving. Farmland blended in with...other farmland, Sam guessed, the only variation being the shades of green and occasionally yellow or brown of the fields. It was seriously Nowheresville, Nebraska, and kind of an odd place for a Brooklyn physics student to wind up, even on a cross-country trip. "How long have you been here, Jackie?" Sam asked. She twisted around in her seat to face him, her blonde hair haloing her in the bright mid-day light.

"'Bout a month now," she replied, shoving her hair behind her ear. "I don't think I'll stay more than another week or so. It was very nice of the hotel manager to hire me so short term, but I think he's been looking for help anyway."

Sam paused. "Really? The motel didn't seem very busy," he said, a cold dot of suspicion forming in his stomach.

Jackie shrugged, her pink jacket rustling at the gesture. "Benjy's not really much of a worker, if you know what I mean," she said conspiratorially. "He's a nice b—oy, but lazy." Sam couldn't decide if he found her stammer endearing or pitiable. "I think that Mr. Hendricks just liked having a girl around, honestly," she added.

Sam nodded, not convinced.

Dean maneuvered the Impala into a tight parking space between a pick-up truck and another pick-up truck, and the three clambered out and walked into the tiny restaurant, diner would be more precise, with the name "Leo's Burgers" inscribed on a Coke-sponsored sign above the door. It looked run-down, shabby, greasy, and in general everything Dean loved in a burger joint. Sam watched his eyes light up as he swept Jackie into an unexpected hug, making her squeak. "I love you and your taste in burgers, and I want you to marry me," he said earnestly.

Jackie screamed with laughter, and once she'd calmed down retorted, "I think you have to buy me my burger first, and then I'll consider the proposal." Dean let her down, and she tried to smooth her mussed hair. Sam was smiling as he saw her give Dean a curious look, something between sadness and questioning hope.

A bell rang above the door as she led them into the diner. It was like the 1950's had never left this town. The booths were all covered in cracking red pleather, the counters were made of faded linoleum, and there was an honest-to-God antique jukebox in the corner. It was obviously not in working order, but the point stood.

Jackie called out to the cook, a large, jolly Santa Claus of a man in a shirt that was at once point probably white and a stained red apron. He waved cheerfully at her with his hand holding a spatula, shouting, "Hey, Jackie! Brought friends?"

"Yeah! This is Dean and Sam. They're from out-of-town and looking for the world's best burger," Jackie replied, gesturing animatedly at the Winchesters. "I told them this was the place!"

The man grinned as widely as Jackie, and nodded for a waitress to sit them down. A bored brunette girl grabbed a couple of menus that had seen better days and muttered "follow me" as she led them down about fifteen feet to an open booth, where she slid the menus down the table and walked off.

Jackie watched the girl as she left, then shrugged, raising her eyebrows dramatically. "Service isn't great, but they make up for it with the food," she explained.

"Long as she brings my burger I don't care if she likes me," Dean replied, sliding into the booth and scanning the menu with a connoisseur's eye. Jackie took her seat across the table, and Sam slid in next to Dean.

Jackie shrugged her way out of her jacket, folding it and putting it on the seat next to her. As she did, she asked, "So what brought you boys here? Not exactly a tourist location."

"You ended up here," Sam said lightly.

She looked at him, her eyes assessing him, and then said, "I wound up where my gas ran out. I don't think Dean would let his gas run out."

"You got that right," Dean scoffed, his gaze not leaving the menu. Jackie smiled at him, then turned back to Sam.

"Well? Or was it under _mysterious_ circumstances?" she teased.

Sam did his best to smile back at her. "We were coming to visit a friend a couple of towns over," he answered honestly. "We were on our way home, got tired, and saw the motel. Thought we'd take a load off for a couple of days, see what the area had to offer."

Jackie laughed. "Well, this is pretty much it," she said, gesturing to the diner. "I'm not gonna lie, this isn't exactly a culture hub. You're gonna want a fried egg on that burger, Dean, trust me."

"Don't I know it," muttered Dean, his eyes still glued to the menu.

The bored waitress, whose name tag said _Sally_, walked back up to the table with a pad and pen. "What do you want to drink," she said, her downward inflection speaking volumes about how much she cared what they wanted.

"We'll all take root beers," Jackie answered. "Trust me," she added to the Winchesters, "the root beer is almost as good as the burgers. I'll take my usual, Sally, thanks."

Sally rolled her eyes and muttered "Yeah, your _usual_," then turned to Sam, who ordered his burger just as it came. Dean created a monstrous masterpiece of additions to his order, which Sally grudgingly recorded before she grabbed the menus and walked off without another word.

"She's friendly," Sam noted.

"Oh, Sally's just...a bit dull," Jackie said. "Nothing interests her. She's not a bad girl, once you get used to her."

Sally came back with the root beers, dropped them off silently, and walked away. Sam looked at his, another magnificent 50's throwback in a fluted, faceted glass, with a thick foam on top. He sipped it. "Wow, Jackie, you were right. This is awesome," he said, impressed. Jackie grinned.

"Aren't they? I love 'em. I come here for lunch as often as I can." Jackie paused. "Which is a lot."

Dean glanced at her appraisingly, and smirked. "You don't look like you eat burgers all the time," he said. Sam almost groaned aloud. That was what passed for a compliment with Dean?

Jackie just laughed again, though, and said, "Oh, I run. A lot." She fell into another fit of giggles, as though that were the funniest joke she'd ever heard.

"Yeah?" Dean asked, smiling, oblivious to the weirdness. "You like fitness?"

Jackie opened her mouth to answer when a loud shattering noise came from the front of the restaurant. Sam and Dean shot up immediately, and Jackie turned in her seat to see what had happened.

Sally stood at the front counter, burgers and broken plates all over the floor in front of her, clutching her head. "Sally?" Jackie called, standing slowly. The other girl didn't turn at the sound of her name, but began to thrash her head around, side to side, a little too fast for normal.

Jackie started towards Sally, but Sam grabbed her arm. "Wait," he said, not taking his eyes off of the waitress.

"She's not all right," Jackie protested, struggling against his grip. "Let me go see what's wrong."

Sam just shook his head, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean prepping the Colt.

Sally turned, her eyes out of focus. She opened her mouth, wide, wider, too wide. She began to make noise, and the sound that came out of that too-wide mouth wasn't human. It sounded like static, broken and low-pitched, but it was language. Sam knew that, somehow.

The cook came out from the back, looking worried. "Sally? Sally, what's wrong?" he asked, and Sally turned to him. She grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall. His eyes bulged and her scrabbled at her hands, her impossibly strong grip, as his toes left the floor. He gurgled, trying to say her name, but her hold on him didn't waver.

"Sam." Sam turned to Dean, who glanced down at the Colt and then at Jackie. Sam nodded, understanding, and put an arm around Jackie. She looked up at him, confused, but her eyes quickly fell on Dean, who was aiming the pistol at Sally.

"No!" Jackie screamed, wrenching herself out of Sam's grasp and knocking Dean's aim out of true. The bullet hit the ceiling, and the few other patrons screamed and began to flee from the diner.

"Dammit!" Dean shouted, and Sam saw the creature that was once Sally whip her head around when the bullet was fired. It watched Jackie for a moment, then dropped the cook. It opened its mouth again, and let out more of the static noise. Jackie's eyes widened, but the Sally-thing ran out of the diner without another sound.

Jackie recovered quickly from her shock, running to the cook. "Are you all right?" she asked, helping him lie down. He didn't say anything, but made a choking sound.

"I'll go look for the demon, you watch Jackie," Dean ordered, and Sam didn't argue. He watched his brother dash out of the restaurant, and then went up to Jackie.

"Here, watch him," Jackie said. "I'm going to call...911. Is that okay? You can watch him?"

Sam nodded, and she pulled out her cell phone, and dialed a number that seemed too long to be 911. She tapped her fingers on her leg frantically while she waited. Someone picked up, because she said, "Yes, I'm at Leo's Burgers, corner of Congress and 7th. There's a man here who was attacked. No, the assailant's gone. Right, she's gone. He was choked." She bit her lip, trying to keep her breathing steady. "Somebody went after her. She went crazy...like, possessed or something. Yes. Okay, send someone quick." She closed the phone, looked at it for a moment, and tucked it back into her pocket.

"You're pretty calm," Sam said, studying her.

She didn't look at him, but went back to the cook. She traced a finger along the bruises that were already forming around his neck. "Yeah, well, there's no point in panicking," she said. "It's not going to help."

Sam was about to say something when Dean burst back into the restaurant, looking pissed. "I lost her," he spat, glaring out the door. Turning back, he gestured to the cook. "He gonna be okay?"

"I think so," Sam said. "We called an ambulance."

Dean knelt down next to Sam and Jackie, and asked the girl in a quiet voice, "Why did you hit my arm?"

Jackie stared at him like he'd grown another head. "You were going to _shoot Sally_," she exclaimed, enunciating carefully, like she was speaking to a child. "You were gonna kill her!"

"Whatever she was, Jackie, that's not Sally anymore," Dean said. Jackie opened her mouth to protest, but Dean shook his head. "I know it sounds crazy. But it wasn't Sally that attacked...uh..."

"Leo," Jackie said sharply.

"Leo here," Dean finished. "Something took her over."

"Well if something _took her over_, then shouldn't we get it out of her instead of shooting her?" Jackie asked, her voice chilly.

"Doesn't work like that," said Dean. Jackie snorted, shaking her head. Dean's face flushed, and Sam knew he was getting angry. "Look, lady, that thing was about to kill your friend—"

"That _thing_ is also my friend," Jackie snapped. "And I just don't believe that she's gone."

Dean was going to say something back, but Sam put a hand on his arm, shaking his head. Jackie was obviously more shaken than she was trying to seem, and explaining demonic possession to her and the likelihood of getting Sally back alive wasn't a good move just now. "As soon as the ambulance gets here we'll bring you home, okay? Let's just take it easy. We're all stressed out," Sam said soothingly.

Jackie nodded tightly, running her hand over Leo's forehead with tenderness. Sam watched her, and wondered why she was so collected. She was angry, but she wasn't freaking out. And she'd just seen someone she knew possessed.

He wished he had his flask of holy water with him.

They waited quietly for the ambulance to arrive, and it did, eventually. As he saw the lights in the distance, Sam realized that it was sunset. The ambulance pulled over and the paramedics poured out, moving the Winchesters and Jackie aside to help Leo. The police who accompanied them answered a few perfunctory questions, but nothing too in-depth. They'd spoken to Jackie first, and they seemed satisfied with her story. The search was on for Sally already, they said, and they were sure she wouldn't get far. Dean and Sam cooperated, but asked if they could take Jackie home before they got too much information on them. Jackie did her part by suddenly looking very shaken and frightened, and the police allowed it.

Once they were safely in the Impala, however, Jackie's facade fell away, and she sat stubbornly in the back seat. No chivalry allowed this time, evidently. "We'll have to go out looking for Sally," Dean said under his breath, and Sam glanced at him. "We can't let the police find her, Sammy, she'll rip 'em apart."

"Don't worry about Sally," Jackie said. Both brothers turned to look at her, and she looked a bit taken aback. "I mean, the police are going to find her. They'll take care of it," she amended.

"Jackie, you saw what she did to Leo," said Sam, incredulous. "She's not the girl you knew anymore."

Jackie said nothing to that, but crossed her arms and huddled into the back seat. Sam exchanged a look with Dean, who shook his head.

They arrived at the motel, and Jackie climbed out of the Impala, closing the door carefully. Sam followed suit, and when she met his eyes, he was pretty sure he saw apology in them.

Sure enough, she said, "I'm sorry. I'm just...I don't know what's going on. It's all too much." Sam smiled and squeezed her shoulder gently, reassuringly, but he didn't buy it. It wasn't all too much for her, and that's what was weird. It definitely should have been.

Dean was the last out of the car, and he led the three of them into the motel. "Come up to our room for a bit, take a load off before you go home," he invited, and for once there was no ulterior motive.

Jackie smiled without mirth and shook her head. "That's nice of you, but I'm staying here, too," she said.

"Yeah?" said Sam. "Where?"

She looked at him strangely. "Down the hall from you," she said. "Look, I appreciate everything, but I'm dead beat. I need to get some rest. It's been...a long day."

"Sure, sure," Dean said quickly. "Let's just walk up together."

Jackie acquiesced to that, and the Winchesters walked her down to her room, where she bid them a quick farewell and closed the door on their faces.

It wasn't until they were back in their room that Sam said anything.

"Okay, she's really weird, right?" he exclaimed.

Dean laughed at him, shaking his head. "You were dying to say that, huh? But yeah, man, that's a weird chick." He sat down on his bed, frowning. "I thought at first she was just tough, maybe even a Hunter, but that's not it. She's..." He trailed off, shrugging. "I don't know what she is."

Sam fell back on his bed, thoughts racing around his head. There was something wrong with Jackie, that was obvious. But what was it? Demonic possession? She'd been weirdly friendly for a long time, and if she was a demon, why would she bring them somewhere to see another demon possess someone? It didn't add up. She wouldn't have wanted them thinking about demons, if she was one. And if she was a demon, she'd know who they were, and she'd know they knew how to handle demons.

Sam grabbed the ice bucket off the counter and opened his bag, pulling his flask of holy water out of it and putting it inside the bucket. "I'm gonna go look for some ice," he lied, and slipped out of the door before Dean could protest.

He took the bucket and snuck down the hall to Jackie's room, where he squatted down and pressed his ear against the door.

Perfect timing, as it turned out.

"Yes, I'm fine." The voice was Jackie's, but the Brooklyn accent was gone, replaced by a British one. Sam froze. Yeah, it could be a coincidence. But was that likely? He and his brother hadn't survived this long by believing in coincidence. "Yes, I'm sure! Stop being stupid. That's not what's important. Did you find Sally?" A sigh of relief. "Thank God. Is she all right? Did it leave? Okay. Good. I swear, Dean was moving so fast I thought he'd catch her. He's a runner, that one, you'd like him." A laugh, then her voice, more sober. "But really. He almost killed her. I almost couldn't stop him. He had this...this pistol. But it wasn't just a gun, I could tell, it felt..._wrong_. No, I don't know more than that. I...I think the game's up. I think they know something's off with me, or at least Sam does. No, I _know_ it didn't give you enough time. I'm sorry! It's just been too long since I've been a scared shop girl. I didn't flip out enough, I guess." A pause, and another sigh. "All right. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Be safe, all right? Be safe. All right. 'Night."

He heard her flip the phone closed, and scrambled to his feet, putting as much distance as possible between him and the door. He was on the other end of the hall by the time she opened her door. She looked the other way first, then his direction. She startled, just a little, and called—her Brooklyn accent back, he noticed—"Sam?"

He turned to her, as though startled himself. "Oh! Jackie. I was just—looking for ice. Is there an ice machine nearby?"

She shook her head slowly, her eyes narrowed. "No, I don't know why Mr. Hendricks has those buckets. There's an ice tray in your freezer."

Sam shrugged with a smile. "Okay, then! Thanks!" he said, and walked deliberately slowly back to his room. She was suspicious enough—no need to give her reason for it.

He closed the door behind himself, and leaned heavily against it for a moment. "What the hell was that, Sammy?" Dean shouted, and Sam made frantic shushing gestures. Dean walked up to him, grabbed his younger brother's shirt, and hissed, "What the hell?"

Sam shook him off and went to his bed, leaving the bucket forgotten by the door. "She's up to something," he said, quietly but urgently. Dean met him at the bed, sitting down on his own across from Sam, putting the bucket down and tossing Sam his holy water back. Sam caught it. "She was talking to somebody on the phone. Her accent's a fake. She's British." This last item he said meaningfully, and paused for Dean to pick up on it.

Dean didn't. "And?" he asked impatiently.

"Dean, really? Two weird British people—or whatever—drop into our life on the same day and you don't think that's a little weird?" Sam demanded. He nodded as Dean's eyes widened with understanding. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"You think she's working with that Doctor guy? Keeping an eye on us?" Dean asked. Sam shrugged, and Dean ran his hands roughly through his hair. "Damn! How'd he find us? No—wait." Dean frowned. "She's been working here for a month, she said."

"Could be lying," Sam interjected.

"Right, but even if she's lying, the people here know her," Dean insisted. "She had a _usual_ at the burger place. How would the Doctor have known to plant her here to find us? How could he have known we'd be at Ellen's?"

"I don't know," Sam said quietly. "I really don't, man. But if it's not the Doctor, it's something else. She mentioned us by name, and she said that she was pretty sure we were onto her."

"Well, whatever else she is, the bitch is perceptive," Dean growled. Sam wondered at how quickly the girl Dean had been flirting with all morning turned into _the bitch_. "So what do we do? Do we take her now?"

Sam shook his head. "No, she might slip up. She thinks we're onto her but she's not sure. If we watch her, she could still make a mistake and we can figure out who she's working for."

Dean exhaled, frustrated. "So we just go to bed with what might be a stalker demon a couple doors down?"

"Yup," Sam said, kicking off his shoes. "G'night!"

Dean's grumbling was the last thing Sam heard as he slipped into slumber.


	4. Chapter 4

When Sam woke up the next morning, Dean was still fast asleep, snoring lightly. Sam smirked. Better than snoring like trucks down-shifting on the highway, which is how he normally sounded. He dressed quietly, slipping his shoes on and heading out the door.

As he closed the door quietly behind him, he heard her doing the same down the hall. He looked up at Jackie, who was already watching him. "Morning," she said with a quirk of her lips into what was almost a smile.

"Morning!" he replied, putting the key in his jacket pocket. "How are you feeling?"

Jackie shrugged, nodding as she said, "Fine. I'm all right. Got the day off, so I'm going to relax a little. Go into town and pamper myself."

Sam paused. She wasn't trying to follow them? "Yeah? You want to be by yourself, already? 'Cause we don't have plans today, if, you know, you don't want to be alone."

Jackie shook her head, shoving her hands into the pockets of her fluffy pink jacket. "That's very nice," she said, "but I'm okay. I'd prefer some time by myself. You and your brother have a good day, see all the sights our lovely town has to offer—all two of them—and maybe we'll catch each other tonight."

She started to walk off, and Sam touched her arm. She turned, looking at him warily, and he removed his hand. "You _sure_ you're okay?" he asked. "Because what we saw yesterday...that was some weird stuff."

Jackie stepped away from him, frowning. "Yeah. I'm _sure_ I'm okay," she said, a trace of mockery in her voice. "And yeah, it was weird. But Sally was always a little strange. Of all the people I've met here it wouldn't surprise me if she was, you know, bonkers." Ah, there it was. Her British accent slipped through, just the smallest bit, in that last word. While he was thinking it, she nodded to him once. "See ya, Sam."

She turned and walked out of the hallway, and Sam watched her go. He'd seen a lot of demons in human disguises before...a lot of evil creatures possessing innocent people's bodies. He'd been fooled by them before. But this girl didn't feel like that. There was something weird about her, that was for sure, but he found it hard to doubt her humanity. If she was in league with the Doctor or some other demon, it was of her own accord.

Maybe that was worse.

"Sammy?" He turned around to see a fully-dressed but sleepy Dean standing in the doorway. "Where're you going?"

"I was going to see if Jackie was downstairs, but I met her in the hall," Sam said, as Dean closed the door behind himself and walked over to his brother. "She said she has the day off. She's going to town by herself. Didn't even want to come with us when I offered."

Dean pulled a face. "If she's the Doc's eyes and ears, she's not very good at it," he said wryly. "So if we're not gonna play babysitter, what's the game plan for today?"

Sam started walking down the hall, and Dean followed him. "I figure we find out what happened to Sally," he said. "If the police haven't found her yet, we need to."

"And if the police _did_ find her, we need to find her. The trail of bits of cops should probably be a good hint," Dean said darkly.

"God, you're just a ray of sunshine," said Sam, disgusted, but Dean only laughed as they walked downstairs.

It was a beautiful day outside, sunny and cool. The whole picture was just so picturesque middle America that it was hard to believe that some girl had gotten possessed by a demon not two miles from here the night before. Sam looked around, taking in the motel, the single road that it lay on, the woods across the street. They looked surprisingly thick. Maybe it was a tree farm? Either way, that was the one thing that added a hint of menace to the scene. All this open farmland, and one mini-forest, right where they were staying. So typical.

Dean was already in the Impala and had started the car when he looked up. "You coming?" Dean shouted over the sound of the engine, and Sam sighed, trudging towards his brother's car.

Dean drove them down the same two-lane roads that they'd driven with Jackie. The town looked less cute today, more run-down, more sad. The recession hadn't been kind here. Sam looked out the window at all the _closed_ signs, the boarded windows. Maybe the town was creepier than he'd given it credit for.

Dean parked the Impala across the street from Leo's. The calm of the place seemed to belie what had happened the previous day, and as the brothers approached the doors, Sam was stunned to see Leo behind the counter, chatting up a customer. He had a bandage around his head, but otherwise looked fine. He looked up as the bell announced Dean opening the door, and smiled a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Jackie's friends!" he said, walking up to them. He stuck out his hand and shook both Sam and Dean's hands firmly. "I have to thank you. I'm told you two helped save me."

"We do what we can," Dean said.

"We were coming to check on Sally," Sam added. "We wanted to see if they found her, if she was okay."

Leo raised his eyebrows, but nodded. "Actually, she's fine. Some guy found her a mile or so away from here, brought her to the hospital. The cops met 'em there, docs say she suffered from a psychotic break or something. She'll be in the hospital for a little while, but they say she'll be okay."

Sam turned sharply to Dean. Dean narrowed his eyes, and said, "Really? She's okay?" He knew Leo wouldn't see, but knowing his brother as well as he did Sam noticed all the little signs of his tension rising. His hands clenched, just a little, his shoulders rolled back a bit, he rocked back on his heels. Sally shouldn't be okay, unless somebody else performed an exorcism on her. Or unless the demon had agreed to go to the hospital, for some other reason.

"Which hospital did they take her to?" Sam asked quickly, before Leo noticed Dean's weirdness. Thankfully the older man turned to him, allowing Dean to relax.

"Municipal, down Congress on the other side of town," he said. "Why?"

"We're bringing Jackie," Sam said. "She's feeling too shaken up to go by herself."

Leo's expression softened immediately, turned fond. "Good. Thank you, boys. Jackie's a sweet girl. It'll do Sally good to see her."

"How long have you known Jackie?" asked Sam. The older man was not faking his affection for Jackie, but if she were in league with a demon he could've been manipulated into feeling the way he did for her.

"She's been in town for a month, she said, and she started coming here about three weeks ago," Leo said. "She's always tried hard to be friendly to Sally. And deep down, Sally likes her, too. It's hard not to like Jackie. She's such a ray of sunshine."

"Yeah, that she is," Dean said, putting his arm around Sam's shoulders. Sam made a face at him, just a brief flash before Leo could see. "Thanks for your help, Leo."

"We're glad to see you're doing okay," Sam added.

Leo nodded, sticking his hand out to shake once more. Both Winchesters acquiesced. "Take care of Jackie. She's sensitive," Leo said, and Sam nodded tightly before they left.

"Sensitive my ass," Dean said under his breath as they climbed back into the Impala. "Think she's got the whole town wrapped around her little finger like that?"

"She almost had us fooled," Sam mentioned. Dean glanced at him sideways.

"Almost?"

"Shut up," Sam snapped, flushing. "Okay, so we head to the hospital. We find Sally. How are we going to exorcise her in front of the whole hospital staff?"

"Maybe Leo was right," Dean said. "Maybe she's just fine now." Sam shot him a glance, but Dean was grinning. Sam shook his head. "Come on, Sammy, lighten up. We can handle this. I could've smoked her back in the diner if your girlfriend hadn't screwed up my aim."

"She's not—stop it," Sam sputtered, glowering out the window. The hospital rose behind an office building to their left, and Sam pointed at it. "There. Turn here."

Dean smoothly guided the Impala into the hospital parking lot, stopping and peering at the building as he took the keys from the ignition. "Think they'll just let us up?"

"It's a small town," Sam said. "I doubt it's high-security. But we can bring some fake ID if you think we need it."

Dean shook his head, opening the door and stepping out. Sam followed suit. Dean led them into the hospital, and once they had arrived at the front desk, gifted the young nurse at the desk with a charming but concerned smile. "Can I help you?" she asked, her dark hair pulled back tight into a bun that raised her eyebrows just enough that she looked perpetually surprised.

"Yeah, we're friends of Sally's," Dean said. "We heard she was admitted here and we wanted to come check on her."

The nurse's face immediately became more open, and she flipped through some notes. "Oh yes, yes, sure. Poor Sally. She's stable, though. She's in the psych wing, room 344. She can see visitors now." The nurse put the notes down and turned a warm smile on the Winchesters. "It's so good of you to visit her."

"Hey, whatever we can do," Dean said magnanimously. "Thanks for your help."

"That was..._really_ easy," Sam murmured as they walked away from the desk towards the stairwell. Dean shrugged.

"Gift horses and whatever, Sammy, we're in," replied Dean. The brothers jogged up the stairs, following the blue signs on the walls until they found Sally's room.

Sam stopped dead in the doorway, while Dean walked in. The girl was asleep on the bed, breathing deeply. Dean held his hand out, and Sam tossed him the flask of holy water absently. The older Winchester tipped it over on his hand, then pressed his palm against Sally's exposed arm.

Nothing.

Not a twitch, not a moan, not a fluttering of eyelids. The brothers looked at each other. "She's clean, man," Dean said softly.

"That's not possible," Sam argued.

"I know that, but you try it," Dean said, tossing the flask back. Sam shook his head, capping it. He'd seen it. He didn't need to recreate it. "How?"

"I guess somebody exorcised her," Sam said, walking over to the bed. Sally looked peaceful, if pale. There were no scars, no burns on her body that he could see. No bruises from being restrained. Nothing at all that would indicate a struggle. "Somebody exorcised her...and she was okay with it, I guess?"

"Sammy, that doesn't make a damn bit of sense," Dean said, staring at Sally.

"Well, okay, but there's no better explanation," Sam countered.

They both heard her clear her throat behind them, and they turned simultaneously. Jackie stood in the doorway with a vase of flowers in her hand and a suspicious look on her face. "Fancy seeing the two of you here," she said dryly. Without waiting for a reply she walked into the room and put the vase on the windowsill, pushing Dean aside to stand by Sally's head. Amazingly, Dean didn't say anything, but walked over to Sam. Jackie smoothed Sally's hair away from her eyes. "She's going to be fine," she said soothingly, and then looked up at the Winchesters. "Good thing you didn't shoot her," she added.

Dean took a breath to say something back, but Sam put his arm in front of his brother and fixed his eyes on Jackie. "I don't know what you're up to, but I know you're not who you say you are," he said quietly. "And I don't know what you've done to Sally, but we're gonna find out."

The look on Jackie's face seemed genuinely startled and confused. She stared at him. "What _I've_ done to Sally?" she cried. "I wasn't the one who tried to shoot at her!"

"I heard you on the phone last night," Sam insisted. "I know your accent's a fake, and I know you're working for someone to keep an eye on us."

Jackie squared her shoulders, her hands planted on the bed's guard rail and cocking her head to the side. "The two of you are crazy," she said plainly, "and I'm sorry I was ever friendly with you. Don't worry, though. It won't happen again."

Sam gritted his teeth, and took a few deep breaths before saying something rash.

Instead, he uncapped his flask and threw the holy water on Jackie.

He and Dean tensed, waiting for the big reveal, but the only thing that happened was Jackie spluttering and wiping her face. She used her jacket to dry her eyes, and then glared incredulously at the Winchesters. "_Crazy_," she ground out. "And I'm going to mention to the front desk that there's a couple more patients wandering around the psych ward for them!" She brushed past them, storming out of the room, muttering the whole way about, if Sam heard her correctly, _bloody Americans_.

"See?" he said weakly to Dean. "British." His brother did not look impressed.

"Let's go before she gets security on our asses," Dean sighed, and the two of them left Sally's room.

They had only gotten to the end of the hall before both of them stopped. They looked at each other knowingly. "Yeah?" said Sam.

"Yeah," said Dean, and then walked in the opposite direction from Sam, to the window overlooking the parking lot.

Sam was sure Dean knew what he had seen out of the corner of his eye, but apparently not. The younger Winchester stopped right before the window to Sally's room, peering in.

There he was, just standing by Sally's bed, looking for all the world like a normal human. He was wearing the same suit and coat that he'd worn at Ellen's. A small, sad smile flickered on his face, and he raised one hand and placed his fingertips on Sally's temples, his eyes closing slowly. After a brief moment they opened and he nodded, apparently satisfied.

Sam backed up slowly, keeping as quiet as possible. The Doctor wasn't looking towards him, but he didn't want to do anything to attract his attention. He almost cried out when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Come here," Dean said, dragging him to the window. He followed, keeping panicked eyes on the Doctor, who seemed to be almost deliberately looking everywhere but at Sam. Did he know? Had he seen him?

"Look at that," Dean insisted, pointing out the window towards the dumpsters at the edge of the parking lot.

"Okay, dumpsters," Sam said, baffled. Dean shook his head in frustration.

"No, stupid, _really_ look. Look hard. Look for blue."

"The dumpsters _are_ blue. Is this really the time for I Spy?"

"Sammy, I swear to God—" Dean began, and broke off. "Look between the last dumpster to the right and the one next to it. Look really hard."

Sam shook his head, but squinted out the window. It took some looking, but after a while, he saw it. "Oh, my god," he said, suddenly. Dean looked gratified.

He didn't know how he'd missed it. There was a big phone booth wedged right between the dumpsters, ten feet tall, totally conspicuous. And yet somehow he hadn't seen it. Even now, it felt like he didn't want to look at it—like if he didn't work to focus on it, his eyes slipped away. "Why doesn't it want me to see it?" he murmured. Then his eyes widened. "Dean!"

Dean looked with him, and he tensed. "It's him," he said.

The Doctor strolled across the parking lot, casual as could be, even nodding in a friendly way to a nurse coming on shift. When he arrived at the phone booth he looked both ways, took something out of the pocket of his coat, and opened the door. He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

And the whole thing faded, and disappeared.

The brothers stared, and then looked at each other. "That was weird," Sam said mildly.

"Yeah," Dean replied.

"He was in Sally's room. That's what I saw, that's what I thought you saw," Sam continued. Dean looked at him sharply. "He didn't do anything, just put his hand on her face. Then you grabbed me, and suddenly he was outside."

"He must've done something to her," Dean said. "Maybe he thought she'd get us in the diner. Maybe Jackie's not working for him after all."

"If that's the case then we're up between two demons," Sam said. Dean frowned. "Think about it. If Jackie's not working for the Doctor, she's working for someone else. I'm sure about what I heard last night."

"Well crap," Dean sighed. "That's just super."

"We've gotta find Jackie," Sam said. "Figure out where she fits in all of this."

"Yeah, sure," Dean agreed, and sighed. "Hell, this gets a lot worse and we might not have to worry about my deal after all."

Sam stared at him, but Dean was already walking towards the stairwell.

He didn't say anything as he followed his brother downstairs and to the Impala, but Dean's remark had shaken him. Dean rarely mentioned the deal in front of Sam, and especially not unprovoked. It must have been on his mind anyway for him to say something about it, but why? The case they were on was occupying Sam almost entirely, to the point where he hadn't thought about the deal since that one time two nights ago. Twenty-four hours was longer than he typically went without obsessing over his brother's imminent doom.

Maybe Dean was having the same thoughts he was. Maybe Dean thought that somehow, this Doctor could help answer the question of how to save his life. He'd bet a lot of money that Dean wasn't willing to go so far as to say that the Doctor could _help_ him, but maybe he at least hoped that he could beat some answers out of him. That was, after all, more or less Dean's MO.

But Sam wasn't so sure. This demon had not only kick-started his visions again, but had interacted with him in the vision, placed a spy at their motel weeks before they'd decided to go there, and scared the crap out of Ellen and apparently their dad. If the Doctor was going to help them, it was going to have to be voluntarily. Because if they had to kill him it would have to be quick and by surprise. He had a feeling that if they let him start talking, distract them, that would be it.

Sam was going to have to handle this one on his own.

They pulled up at the motel, and Dean stormed inside, leaving Sam to catch up with him. His mind was still full from trying to figure out what Dean was thinking, and obviously _asking_ his brother was not an option. He didn't know why Dean was in such a hurry to find Jackie. It wasn't like it seemed that the Doctor was willing to let them out of his sight, and where the Doctor went Sam was sure they'd find Jackie, one way or another.

He didn't have a good guess as to whether or not she was with the Doctor. He wouldn't have thought the Doctor the type to get someone else to do his dirty work, but it wasn't like he knew much about the Doctor, to be fair. He hoped she was, though, because the idea of taking on the Doctor and some other demon at the same time just struck him as...unfair.

"Did Jackie come back here?" Dean was asking Benjy, Jackie's reportedly useless co-worker, when Sam got into the lobby.

Benjy frowned, looking from brother to brother as though trying to figure out what was going on. "I mean, yeah," he said, slowly.

"Is she upstairs?" Sam pressed.

Benjy shook his head slowly. He seemed to do everything slowly. "No. Jackie quit. Took her stuff and just walked out, across the street. She was lookin' weird."

Sam glanced at Dean. "She left her car?" he asked.

Benjy furrowed his brow. "She didn't have a car," he said, as though it should be obvious. "She said she was hitch-hiking and needed to kick back for a couple weeks, earn some money. Mr. Hendricks hired her. I thought it was weird."

So much for _I stopped where my gas ran out_. "Where did you say she went?" Sam asked, frustrated. There wasn't a thing that Jackie hadn't lied about.

"Across the street," Benjy said.

The brothers looked out the door almost in unison, then at each other. "Into the woods?" Dean asked. Benjy nodded. Dean sighed. "Of course she did."

When he turned, Sam was already rolling his eyes. "I guess we're going hiking," he said dismally. Dean nodded, and they walked out of the motel.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Thanks for the feedback, guys! Keep it coming! This is one of my favorite chapters so far. I hope you enjoy it, too.

* * *

It wasn't woods, precisely. It was a wooded area. But it still managed to be pretty creepy, Sam thought, as they picked their way carefully through it. No way a normal girl, barely out of her teens, would just go wandering around in the forest after ditching her job. Not even a girl ballsy enough to hitch-hike across the country by herself. It just didn't make any sense.

"What the hell was she doing coming here?" Dean grumbled, echoing his brother's thoughts. Sam shrugged. "Think it's an ambush?" Dean rested his hand on the Colt and glanced at Sam. "Just in case."

Sam didn't respond, but watched the area around him warily. The trees were close together, providing lots of opportunity for someone to jump out at them. He shifted his grip on the knife he'd brought, feeling his palms begin to sweat. An ambush. Jackie didn't seem too threatening—he was pretty sure they could take her—but if she brought reinforcements, they'd be in trouble here. There wasn't enough room for maneuvering. He bit his lip and said a quick prayer that they wouldn't die.

He was checking behind them when Dean stopped abruptly. He ran into his brother, both of them stumbling forward, but when he looked up Dean was staring straight ahead. He followed his brother's line of sight.

The phone booth.

There was a small clearing, a break in the canopy where the light shined in an overly dramatic way over the box. It sat there, totally out of place but still managing to convince Sam that it belonged there. He frowned, narrowing his eyes and trying to dismiss that impression. It didn't belong there. Phone booths didn't belong in the middle of the woods off the highway. They didn't.

Dean fished around in his pocket for a moment and came up with his lock-picking gear. He glanced at Sam, flashed a grin that didn't look terribly convincing, and walked up to the phone booth. He took a deep breath as Sam stepped right behind him, facing the other direction and taking the Colt from Dean, scanning the woods.

He could hear the quiet, sharp sounds of Dean working the lock, and the even softer muttered obscenities as the lock refused to budge. "Son of a bitch, Sammy, I don't know what's up with this lock," Dean said, his voice quiet but thick with frustration.

"You're not gonna get in. Not that way."

The brothers whipped their heads around, and Sam pointed the pistol at Jackie's head. She was leaning against a tree, her arms crossed. She watched them with a sad expression. "Yeah?" Dean said. "And why is that?"

Jackie laughed softly. "Because she won't let you," she replied, her British accent thick. Dean frowned, and Jackie pulled out what looked like a normal Yale key on a long chain from inside her shirt. "You need one of these."

"Who won't let us?" Sam demanded, keeping the gun trained on her. She looked remarkably unconcerned at the idea of having a weapon pointed at her.

Jackie inclined her head towards the phone booth. "She won't. But it doesn't matter, because he's not in there anyway."

"So you are working for the Doctor," Sam said. "You were spying on us for him."

Jackie looked pained. "I'm not working for the Doctor," she said. "It's...more complicated than that. And I wasn't spying on you. I was trying to keep you safe. I am sorry I had to lie to you. I wish I hadn't."

"Yeah, that's likely," Dean scoffed. "You looked real sorry about it when you let that demon get away."

"If you'd killed it, you'd be in a lot more trouble than you're already in," Jackie said. "Which is a lot."

"What's your name?" Sam asked.

Jackie grimaced and shook her head. "Yeah, I thought it was stupid, but he was worried about me. I had to be here so long that he didn't want anybody catching wind of me. My name is Rose."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "How'd you know where we'd end up?"

Jackie-no, Rose opened her mouth to answer, then shut it suddenly, biting her lip. She rubbed the back of her neck. "I actually don't know if I can tell you that," she said, as though admitting something embarrassing.

Dean stood up from his lock-picking and grabbed the knife that Sam had put away, striding up to Rose and laying it against her throat. She raised her chin away from it, but fixed Dean with calm eyes. "Well you'd better start talking, sweetheart, or we're gonna have some problems," he hissed.

Rose cast her eyes down, then laughed once and met Dean's eyes with a look of pity. "You're not gonna hurt me," she said quietly.

"You willing to bet on that?" Dean asked, pressing the knife harder against her skin.

Rose nodded, small, careful movements. "Yeah. I am. Because you're like him. You don't hurt people who don't deserve it, not when you can help it."

"I've hurt a lot of people who didn't deserve it," Dean said. Sam heard the pain in his voice, even as he tried to sound so hard and threatening.

Rose kept her eyes on him. Sam looked to make sure she wasn't reaching for a weapon, but she was very still. Sam got the feeling that she was unarmed. "I know you have," she whispered. "And I know, it hurts. But sometimes it's what you have to do. I understand. So does he," she added.

"So if you're just Nancy Normal over here, what are you doing running with some badass demon like the Doctor?" Dean demanded, changing the subject abruptly.

Rose looked taken aback, and a little angry, but she quickly smoothed out her expression. "It's not as...ugly as you make it sound," she said defensively. "He's not what you think he is."

"Yeah?" Dean said. "Sure, he's just an incredibly powerful demon who kidnaps young women and uses innocent waitresses as bait to trap Hunters. I bet he's got a great personality, though."

"He didn't kidnap me," Rose spat hotly. "He saved my life and invited me to travel with him. And he's not the one who did that to Sally. He's the one who saved her, if you're interested. You were gonna just shoot her in the head; he saved her."

"I'm sure he's a real white knight," Dean mocked. "That's why our friends are so scared of him that they tried to hide us from him."

Rose shook her head in amazement. "No, that's not him," she said. "Yeah, he's...scary. He's mad. And you're right, he's powerful. But he's more than that. He's...brilliant. And wonderful, and he loves us. Humanity. He's got everything that ever existed at the push of a button and he comes here, time and time again, to save us. He's wonderful but he thinks we're wonderful." She'd developed a dreamy look on her face, and Sam realized she was in love with the Doctor. It was like she'd forgotten the knife at her throat, the pistol leveled at her head, the fact that they both stood between her and what was apparently her getaway vehicle. Everything but the Doctor.

Dean slowly took the knife away from her throat. He glanced at Sam. "Psychic manipulation?" he suggested. Sam shrugged and nodded.

Rose stared at him, then turned away, shaking her head in disgust or disappointment. Her hands had balled up into fists. "Unbelievable," she said. The brothers turned to her. "You just can't believe—can't bear to believe that there's anybody but you on your side! Some kind of lone wolf ego trip, is that what it is?"

Dean stepped right in front of her, stooping a little so that he was at her eye level. "I don't believe in anything I haven't seen," he said, enunciating carefully. "And I've never seen anything that isn't human that wants anything but pain for people like you and me. You don't think I wish we had help? It's me and my brother and a handful of people like us against hordes of beasts from Hell. I would love a god damn hand. But I can't trust anything that isn't human, because it only takes one mistake. One. And you're dead."

Sam saw Dean's hands trembling.

Rose did, too. Slowly, cautiously, she put one pale hand on top of Dean's-the one that didn't grip the knife. He looked at her hand, and then back up at her. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I'm sorry that's what you have to live. I'm sorry you can't trust me. Because there is something coming, and if you do what you always do, you..." She broke off, pressing her hand over her eyes. "I can't even explain it. I wish he were here. He'd make things make sense."

"Well! I've never been accused of doing that before."

All three of them turned at the voice. Dean grabbed Rose with an arm around her shoulders and pressed the knife against her throat again, and Sam turned the gun on the Doctor, who stood nonchalantly a few yards away with his hands in his pockets. He lifted one out and waggled his fingers at Rose. She beamed at him and waved back, still apparently unconcerned by the knife.

"I see you've met my girls," the Doctor said.

"Jackie found us exactly where you planted her to," Dean snarled. The Doctor's eyebrows shot up, and he looked at Rose, who groaned a little.

"Jackie?" the Doctor crowed delightedly. "Jackie! All the names in the universe and you pick your mum's?"

"I was rushed!" Rose cried.

"And you didn't pick, I don't know, your middle name?" pressed the Doctor, his eyes dancing with amusement.

"Oh, what, Marion? Yeah, lots of girls named Marion these days," Rose said scornfully. "And by the way, Doctor, I do sort of have a knife against my throat right now, so if you're quite done making fun of my mum's name..."

"Right, yeah, of course, but I wasn't making fun of your mum's name," the Doctor said, digging in his pocket. Sam cocked the pistol, and the Doctor glanced at him, then continued both talking and digging. "Just that it was your first go-to for an alias. Really, I'd've preferred something that didn't have a connection to you at all. You know. Annie. Laura." He pulled that same device he'd used in Sam's vision out and before Sam could pull the trigger, he depressed the button.

The pistol grew white-hot in Sam's hands, and he dropped it with a cry. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Dean had dropped the knife and was shaking his hand to try to cool it, while Rose ran to the Doctor.

"Sarah," the Doctor concluded, as though nothing had happened. "Something normal and sort of nondescript. That's better. I'm not a fan of weapons. I think we can talk like reasonable people."

"What do you call that then?" Dean growled through the pain in his hand.

The Doctor held up the device. "Oh, this? This is my sonic screwdriver." He watched the Winchesters' reactions, and grinned. "Doesn't wound, doesn't kill, doesn't maim. Opens doors very well. Lots of settings. It's quite useful."

"Doesn't wound?" Sam echoed disbelievingly. He held his hands in front of himself. "Really?"

The Doctor's smile slipped. "Your hands will be fine," he said. "Rose wouldn't have been if your brother had cut her throat."

Rose touched the Doctor's arm, and he turned to her. The way he looked at her...Sam didn't know what to think. There was such tenderness in his eyes, which had just seemed so cold. Those eyes lit up when they found her, and his whole demeanour changed. Rose, too, seemed to soften into a more relaxed, comfortable posture now that she was near him. "Doctor," she said, "they don't understand. We have to tell them. You have to explain."

"Explain what?" Sam asked. The Doctor turned to him, and once again Sam felt pinned by his eyes.

The Doctor didn't say anything for a long while, and when Rose put her hand on his arm again he took her hand in his and lowered it. He studied Sam carefully, then shook his head as though to snap himself out of it. "Explain what I promised your father, Ellen, and Bill I would never explain to you," the Doctor replied, finally. He turned to Rose, who looked confused and a little upset. His expression softened and his voice was almost pleading as he said, "I can't, Rose, not yet. I made a promise. Please." The last word was quiet, private. Sam knew that there were volumes behind it that Rose would understand where he could not.

Rose started to say something, but the Doctor shook his head and she stopped. Sam watched them, uneasy. When he realized that the Doctor was looking at him, he swallowed hard and said, "What did you do to Sally?"

The Doctor glanced at Rose, who shook her head. "Well," he said, with a tone that implied the careful choosing of words, "I simply convinced the thing inside of her that it would be better to leave on its own."

"Right," Dean laughed, the fury burning in his voice. "You just said, hey demon, ever considered not possessing people? And it was like, oh, I hadn't thought about that, thanks, and then just left Sally? You expect me to believe that?"

The Doctor shrugged casually, but Sam could see the tension in his posture and in his expression. His eyes were hard and calculating as he replied, "You can believe what you like, Dean Winchester. Makes no difference to me." He paused, his eyes flicking from one brother to the other, and he added, "I assume by the tone of this chat that you haven't reconsidered my offer."

"What, for you to tag along with us? No, haven't given that one a lot more thought," Dean said witheringly.

The Doctor nodded as though Dean had given a civil answer. "All right, then. Rose?" He gestured to the phone booth, and she walked to the door, shooting the Winchesters a sad glance. The Doctor walked up to the booth and opened the door a crack. Rose stepped in, and the Doctor followed her. Before either brother could get a look into the booth, the Doctor closed the door behind himself and the phone booth began to fade away with that same creaking, whooshing noise they'd heard at Ellen's.

The Winchesters stood staring at the spot where the phone booth had been for a long moment. Sam watched it though narrowed eyes, slightly worried that the box had finally convinced him it was nothing to worry about and made him unable to see it.

Dean was apparently thinking along the same lines as he stepped forward and, after a moment's hesitation, passed his hand through the space. Nothing blocked his movements, and he released the breath he'd been holding. "They're gone," he said. He looked back at his brother. "Your hands okay?"

Sam held them out, and realized there were no burns. His hands weren't even red. "Yeah," he replied, surprised. "Could've sworn they'd be burnt."

"Yeah, same," said Dean, picking up the knife from where he'd let it fall. He turned it over in his hands suspiciously, then shrugged. "It looks normal. I don't know what he did to it."

Sam picked up the Colt and studied it. "I don't know. I hope it didn't screw up the Colt, though."

Dean startled, staring at the gun. "I swear to God, if he screwed it up, I will hunt that son of a bitch down and beat him to death with it," he growled. He looked up at Sam. "What do we do now?"

Sam shook his head slowly. "There's no point in either trying to find or trying to avoid the Doctor. What we need to do is find out who and what he is, and what his weaknesses are. We need some lore on him, and we need it fast."

"Bobby?" Dean suggested.

Sam nodded. "Bobby. Let's call and let him know we're coming." He took one last, long look at the place where the Doctor's...phone booth, he guessed, had been. Something about that place made the hair on his arms stand on end.

Dean pulled his cell phone out as they began walking back towards the Impala, and dialed Bobby's number. As he put the phone to his ear, he glanced at Sam. "I friggin' hope Bobby has some answers," he said.

Sam hesitated, seeing the anxiety in his brother's eyes, the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the phone. "He will," he said. "If anybody will, it's Bobby."

"Yeah," Dean said, not sounding convinced. His expression shifted as the ringing stopped. "Hey, Bobby. Listen, we got a problem."

Sam listened with half an ear as Dean laid out the situation for Bobby, from his vision all the way to their last meeting with the Doctor and Rose. Rose. She was the piece Sam couldn't figure out. She wasn't a demon, she wasn't possessed, she didn't even seem to be under duress. She was willingly accompanying a demon, taking his orders and defending him to other humans. Maybe she was some kind of weird cultist. The look in her eyes when she talked about the Doctor definitely resembled love. Maybe worship looked like that.

But the thing that got Sam was that when the Doctor looked at her, he saw the same devotion. When she'd begged for him to explain...whatever secret it was he was keeping, he'd begged right back for her to understand why he couldn't. Like it mattered what she thought of him. Like he needed her to believe him. That wasn't how demons treated humans. It just wasn't.

He snapped back to the present when Dean smacked his arm. He glared at his brother, who gestured to the phone, his eyes wide, his face pale. "So that long? You've been trying to figure out who this guy is for that long?" Dean was saying. Sam frowned. "Damn, Bobby. Tell me you've got something. Anything." He paused while Bobby spoke, then nodded, as though Bobby could see him. "Okay. We're headed over now. We'll be there tomorrow, probably a little after noon. Pull out the books so you and Sammy can nerd out." Another pause, and Dean cast his eyes down. "We will, Bobby. He hasn't hurt us yet. I don't think that's what he's after. Sure, Bobby. See you."

Dean closed the phone and pocketed it, silent. Sam gave him a few moments, but eventually the tension got to be too much to bear, and he broke the silence. "Well? What did Bobby say?"

Dean wrinkled his nose. "Well, Bobby said he's been trying to figure out exactly what this son of a bitch is for twelve years," he said.

"That's when the Doctor said he met us," Sam said. "So Bobby was involved with all of that, too?"

"Bobby said he'd never met him, but that he'd heard about him from Dad and Ellen. He said they wouldn't tell him almost anything, other than making him promise to keep the two of us and Jo away from him if anything happened to them. Bobby's been researching him ever since then, but most of what he can find comes from these wack-job UFO enthusiast websites."

Sam stopped short as they exited the woods, and stared at Dean. "Seriously? People think he's an alien?" he exclaimed. "He looks completely human."

"Yeah, and he's apparently looked completely human since photography was invented at the least," Dean retorted, walking away towards the Impala. Sam followed him. "Completely human and into Converse sneakers. There's a couple of witnesses who say they've met the guy, got a couple of things on him that line up pretty well."

Sam looked pensive as they climbed into the Impala. "Okay, so you said most of what Bobby's found comes from the UFO crowd. What else did he say he's got?"

Dean slid the key into the ignition and started the car, not looking at Sam. He seemed reluctant to answer, but finally said, "He wouldn't tell me. Bad stuff, he said. Thought we ought to see it in person."

Sam closed the door behind him and sighed, running his hand over his eyes. "That sounds great," he muttered. "Well. I guess we ought to get this over with."

Dean said nothing, but backed the Impala out of the lot and steered towards the long road to Bobby's house.

* * *

Editing Note 1/30/13: After two comments about it, I've come to understand that people were pretty distracted that I had the Doctor "snapping" the TARDIS doors open before that happened canonically. Since it was evidently taking away from the piece as a whole, I changed it.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: Wow. I am so flattered and encouraged by the response to the last chapter. Thanks to everyone who reviewed. This chapter is extra-long, and I'm going out of town for a little bit, so it might be a little bit longer before I have the next chapter up. But it is written, so it won't be terribly long. I like this chapter, too...I hope y'all feel the same way!

* * *

"The Oncoming Storm."

Bobby laid the book out in front of Sam and Dean, who sat around the table with steaming mugs of coffee. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. It had been a long night and a longer day of driving, and they were exhausted but could hardly think about sleep. Not with the Doctor on their trail, as he undoubtedly was. Staring at the passage that Bobby was pointing do, Dean remarked, "That sounds lovely."

"Yeah, well, it's not the worst thing they call him," said Bobby in a dark voice. "Took me until just a year or so ago to even figure out all this crap's about the same guy. The lore on him goes back to cave paintings, but it doesn't tell us much."

"So this is a demon we've known about since before recorded history, _and_ he shows up in the last few decades as an E.T. sighting?" Sam asked, incredulous. "Why's he being so...visible?"

"And why hasn't some Hunter ganked him before now?" Dean added before taking a sip of his coffee. He shook his head, whistling. "That's some strong stuff, Bobby."

"Figured you boys'd need it to process all this," Bobby replied. "Sam, I don't know. He doesn't seem to be worried about anybody noticing him. But this might be a part of it." He reached into his pile and pulled out two more books, opening them to marked pages. One showed a middle-aged man with curly hair and a ridiculously long scarf, accompanied by a young man and a young woman. The other showed a younger man with very close-cropped hair and a black leather jacket. Standing next to him was Rose.

"Bobby, that's the girl from the motel," Sam said, finding that his heart was racing. "That's the girl with the Doctor."

"And there she is, with the Doctor," Bobby said. He watched them for their reaction.

"That isn't what the Doctor looks like," Sam argued. "He's...taller, lots more hair, a long brown coat—"

"More like this guy?" Bobby slammed a photograph onto the table. It was of the Doctor and Rose.

Sam was stunned. "Yeah. That guy."

Bobby started laying out pictures and books with photos and illustrations. Sam slowly realized that, if you shook them up a little, they would look like the different faces in his vision. "These are all the Doctor," he murmured.

"Story is that when you kill him, he comes back with a different body," Bobby said.

"Ellen mentioned something getting him, and him having a new face," said Dean.

Bobby took one of the books he'd laid out and scanned it. "Always appears as a Caucasian male. He's usually got at least one human with him—they call 'em his Companions. Usually a female, like your motel girl. Sometimes he shows up alone." He paused. "I'd be more worried if he was alone."

"Okay, so how do you kill him?" Dean asked. All about the brass tacks, his brother, Sam thought bemusedly.

Bobby looked up from the book and fixed Dean with his trademark _how are you both alive and this stupid at the same time_ look. "Boy, didn't I just tell you every time you kill him, he comes back?" he asked. Dean had the decency to look abashed. "He's stronger and more durable than your typical human, but a gunshot or a knife in the right place will get him if you're lucky. Most people ain't that lucky. But even if you get a good shot, it'll just make him mad, and he'll get a fresh new body out of the deal. And I said he's been around since cave paintings. Think if we knew how to kill him, somebody wouldn't have by now?"

"Well, what about other demons like him?" Sam pressed. "How have they been killed?"

Bobby turned the look on Sam now. "First off, did I _say_ he's a demon?"

Sam and Dean exchanged glances. "No," Sam replied, figuring honesty was the best policy. "But we figured that—"

Bobby cut him off with an impatient gesture. "Lemme get to some of these other aliases," he said, flipping through a couple of the books. "I already said _The Oncoming Storm_. How about Destroyer of Worlds? Bringer of Darkness? But it's this one that gets me, boys. Some of the lore calls him the Lonely God."

Sam felt his brother go still next to him, and he found himself frozen as well. "Bobby, is he _really_ a god?" Sam heard himself ask.

Bobby shook his head and shrugged. "Boys, I have no damn idea. For all these books tell me, he could be Shakespeare's fool or Good God Almighty. But as far as other things like him, there aren't any. All the lore and all the UFO nut jobs are clear on that. If there's one thing these stories all agree on, it's that there are no other things like the Doctor. He's the last or the only of his kind."

"So we don't know what he is, we don't know how to kill him or if he's killable, we don't know what he wants with us, and we don't know when he's coming," Dean said. "That is just _great_."

A thought occurred to Sam that he almost didn't want to ask out loud, but he figured that they needed to know as much as possible about this Doctor if they had any hope of surviving. "So he's got all these nasty aliases, but what do the lore and the UFO enthusiasts actually say he's _done_?" he asked. "I mean, to call him the Destroyer of Worlds...that's, you know, a big claim."

Bobby rubbed his face vigorously for a moment, then said, "Well, some of the aliases come from the UFO people. That one, they say it's what an alien race calls him. He destroyed their planet, they say, in some great big intergalactic war. But as for things that could possibly have happened...it's hard to tell whether bad things happen when the Doctor shows up, or if the Doctor shows up when bad things happen. Things like Pompeii."

Sam picked up the picture of Rose and the other Doctor, the leather-jacketed Doctor. The picture looked old, and he squinted to make out the background. His eyes widened. "Bobby...when was this picture taken?"

Bobby said nothing, waiting for him to figure it out, to say it out loud.

Dean leaned over to take a look, and Sam stammered, "This—this looks like it was taken at a Suffragist rally."

"A what?" Dean asked.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, crack a book that isn't about demons once in a while. The Suffragists fought to win women the right to vote. Obviously they won, and the nineteenth amendment was passed in 1920." He looked up at Bobby, who nodded. "But Bobby, Rose is in this picture, looking like she does now. And I was almost _positive_ she's human."

"She is. I mean, she probably is," Bobby replied. "Dean said you saw the phone booth, right?" The brothers nodded. "That's called his TARDIS. The UFO nuts say it stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. They say it's his time machine."

"Well that is just _obviously_ stupid," Dean said at once, then his expression shifted and he looked more hesitant. "Right?"

"No, Dean, it makes sense," said Sam, the pieces falling together. "It's how he got Rose to the motel a month before _we_ even knew we were going. He must have followed us, then gotten into his...time machine, and dropped her off a month ago. We've seen it disappear. We know it's a vehicle of some kind. And yeah, it's crazy, but what about the Doctor hasn't been crazy so far?"

"So if I'm following, we're up against a time-traveling, unkillable, immortal demon who might not be a demon but a god," Dean said. "Just keeping score." He sipped his coffee and wrinkled his nose. "Got anything stronger than coffee, Bobby?"

"You don't need to be boozing right now, Dean," Bobby shot back disapprovingly. "We need to come up with a game plan to get the two of you out of this alive, because if what Ellen told you is true, this Doctor's after you. And your daddy had me promise to keep you away from him, and I don't take my promises lightly."

"What about the Shadow Proclamation, Bobby?" Sam asked suddenly. "Do you know anything about that? Because Dad wrote about it in his journal, and the Doctor mentioned it the first time we saw him, back at Ellen's."

Bobby shook his head. "I overheard your dad and Ellen talking about that once, and I couldn't get a damn thing out of them. I tried to do some legwork on my own but got squat for it. Some kind of collective of, I guess, demons and maybe minor gods, but what they do, where they are, or who belongs to it other than the Doctor...you got me."

Sam ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to recall any information that might be relevant. The last few days had been such a blur...so much to try to take in. "Wait, Rose said something. When we saw her by the TARDIS. She said that something was coming, and that if we kept doing things the way we always do, then something will happen. She cut herself off, saying she wasn't sure she was supposed to tell us."

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "I don't know what the hell _that's_ supposed to mean," he said, "but it's something. If you do things the way you always do...what's the way you always do things?"

"Kicking ass and taking names," Dean said, rocking his chair back and putting his feet up on the table. Bobby smacked his boots and he put them down. "Ganking demons. Think it hurts the Doc's feelings? Think if we keep killin' his friends he's gonna have something to say about it?"

"Or not just him," Sam said. "At Ellen's, he said _others_ were taking notice of us, like they did twelve years ago when he ran into Dad. And that he said he could arrest Jo and bring her up. Bring her up where? To who?"

"Maybe the Shadow Proclamation is some kind of demon court," Bobby said, his tone skeptical. "Would make sense that they'd target Hunters."

That silenced the three men for a moment. Sam stared into the black coffee he held in his hand, wondering what a demon court would look like. He imagined panels of black-eyed people, staring down at himself and Dean kneeling, cuffed, on the floor below them. He imagined the Doctor sitting in the judge's seat with a gavel in his hand. He guessed there was probably no innocent until proven guilty, no jury of his peers in a demon court. He shuddered.

When he came back to the present he saw Dean and Bobby watching him. "You boys ought to get some rest," Bobby said. He closed the books closest to the Winchesters. "This place is rigged up good enough that even the Doctor should have some trouble getting in. Now you two go to bed. I'll wake you when it'll do some good for you to be awake."

"Yeah, give us black coffee then send us to bed," Dean scoffed, but there was no fight behind it. He and Sam stood up, and Sam carried their mugs to the sink. "We'll see you when we get up, Bobby."

Sam decided to settle in on the couch, leaving his brother the spare bed. Despite the coffee, the exhaustion was threatening to overtake him. As soon as his head hit the sofa, he was asleep...

His eyes flew open and he wondered if he'd fallen asleep at all. He looked outside and the sun had set, so he supposed he had. He stood up, rubbing his face to wake himself up, and staggered toward the kitchen. He needed some water. He'd needed some water before he fell asleep, but the urge to rest was more powerful.

He groped for the light switch and found it, flipping it on. As his eyes adjusted, he saw Bobby sitting at the table. "Hey, Bobby," he mumbled, stumbling into the kitchen towards the cabinets. He got to the cabinet that held the glasses and took one out, then stopped with the glass in his hand. Static. "Hey Bobby, is the radio on?" he asked, turning around.

Bobby turned around, too.

The glass shattered on the floor.

Bobby's mouth was open wide. Wide like Sally's was. The static emanating from it grew in intensity as he faced Sam. Bobby's eyes were blank, and Sam knew he was possessed. But he also knew that the amulet that Bobby wore should have prevented that, so whatever this demon was, it was incredibly powerful. He didn't have time to perform an exorcism; the demon would kill him and probably Bobby, too, before he could complete the ritual. He reached quickly into the bag he'd left on the floor and pulled out a pistol, training it at what had been Bobby. His hands trembled but his aim remained steady enough. He put his finger on the trigger.

"_...wait..._"

Sam startled, staring at the thing that was Bobby. Through the static he'd heard it. He was sure. He swallowed hard and kept the pistol level.

"_...help...please...lost..._" Bobby's mouth didn't form the words, and Sam knew that the static was still pouring out, but he heard the words in the midst of it. He didn't know _how_ he heard the words. But he did.

"Get out of Bobby, and we can talk," Sam said, feeling foolish. Obviously this was a trap. But if it meant that he could get Bobby back intact, he'd walk into it.

"_...cannot...need body...bring the Storm..._"

"Get out of my friend or I will shoot both of you," Sam shouted, his hands shaking more now.

"_...lost...so lost...Storm will help...so lost..._"

Sam shook his head, and leveled the pistol at Bobby's head. Oh, God. He braced himself, and whispered, "Bobby, I'm so sorry."

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, he heard a familiar buzzing sound behind him. He froze. Not now. Please, not now.

"Put the gun down, Samuel." That calm, commanding voice behind him barely preceded the Doctor stepping in front of Sam. The demon didn't look at him, though, but kept his eyes trained on Bobby. "Put it down."

Sam swung around instead and pointed the gun at the Doctor. "Get out of here," he said hoarsely. "Don't you dare touch him."

The Doctor glanced out him out of the corner of his eye. "Let me take care of this," he said evenly. "I will get your friend back for you."

"_...Storm...the Storm...so lost...so dark...frightened..._" the thing in Bobby crackled. The Doctor watched it with cautious eyes.

"The Storm. The _Oncoming_ Storm," Sam breathed. "It was asking for you." The Doctor turned back to him sharply. Sam jumped.

"How do you know that?" the Doctor asked. "No, wait. Did you understand her speech?"

"Her?" Sam asked.

"The...creature inside your friend. You can understand her?" Sam nodded, and the Doctor frowned deeply. "Now that is unusual."

"_...help...please...so lost..._"

The Doctor turned back to Bobby and approached him, scanning him with the sonic screwdriver. He glanced at the side of it, and nodded. "I need you to identify yourself," the Doctor said gently.

The next thing that came out of Bobby's mouth Sam could not understand, but the Doctor nodded again as though it made sense. "Of course. I should have known. Now I need you to understand—" the noise that came out of the Doctor's mouth sounded remarkably like static, so much so that Sam was momentarily afraid that he, too, had been possessed, "—that invasion by parasitism is a war crime under the Shadow Proclamation. You have to leave this human now."

"_...nowhere to go...cannot survive...help me..._" Through the static the words sounded desperate, frightened. The Doctor put a hand on Bobby's shoulder.

"Leave the human. I will take you home," said the Doctor. The static took on a questioning tone. "Yes. Come with me. Leave the human in peace and come with me."

A long, unbearable moment passed, and then a light came pouring out of Bobby and into the Doctor. A screaming of static accompanied the light, going on and on until Bobby slumped onto the table and the Doctor fell to one knee.

Another moment of silence, and then the Doctor stood. As he turned to Sam, the Hunter braced himself and raised the gun again. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Always with the guns," he said dryly, without a hint of static in his voice.

"Where did it go?" Sam asked, baffled.

The Doctor tapped his head. "Safe in here," he replied. "I have enough room for a passenger and enough experience to stay in the driver's seat." He turned to Bobby and pulled out his screwdriver again, adjusting the setting. He pointed it at Bobby and turned when he heard Sam cock his gun. He looked disappointed. "I'm not going to hurt him," the Doctor said. "If I wanted to hurt him, don't you think I would've left the parasite in?" Sam couldn't argue with that, and lowered the gun. The screwdriver buzzed, and Bobby groaned. "Just stimulating the neurons a little. Getting him kick-started on the healing process."

Bobby blinked sleepily, shaking his head and then grimacing. He focused his eyes on Sam with some effort. "Sam? What the hell happened?" he asked roughly. Sam's eyes flicked over to the Doctor, and Bobby followed them. He paled. "Holy hell."

The Doctor took a step back away from the table. "She's gone, Robert. She didn't mean you harm," he said. "She was lost and afraid, far from home."

Bobby staggered to his feet, staring in horror at the Doctor. He looked at Sam, and with difficulty he stumbled up to the younger man and stood in front of him. "You'll take these boys over my dead body," Bobby ground out.

There was no reaction on the Doctor's face. "John didn't tell you much about our meeting, did he?" the Doctor asked. Bobby frowned. "I didn't think so. I have no intention of hurting your boys, Robert Singer."

"John was pretty sure you did," Bobby spat. "He made me swear I'd keep them safe from you. And I will, whatever it costs me."

The Doctor's lips pressed together into a thin line, and he looked aside, closing his eyes as though to collect himself. "I'm not going to hurt _any_ of you," he said, his voice deliberately calm.

"What was that thing? In Bobby?" Sam asked, despite Bobby's desperate, angry glare.

The Doctor hesitated. "I can't tell you," he said. "I promised your father. But if things continue they way they are, you might learn sooner rather than later."

Bobby took the pistol from Sam's hand and pointed it at the Doctor's chest. "I want you out of my house, and away from these boys," he said.

The Doctor nodded. "All right. But listen to me, Robert." His voice became soothing, comforting. Sam tried to shake his head to clear it, knowing it to be a trick, but he couldn't quite manage it. "I know this must be a terrifying world to live in, for you and for the Winchesters. Full of frightening and powerful creatures you don't understand. But for what it's worth: I am not one of the things you should fear." He moved past Bobby and Sam carefully, heading out the door, keeping his hands visible.

"Doctor," Sam called.

"Boy, you shut up," Bobby warned.

The Doctor stopped and turned, putting his hands in his pockets. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for Sam to say something.

"I...I could understand the demon this time. When it spoke." The Doctor nodded cautiously. "Why? Why this time but not last time?"

The Doctor looked down and to the side, thinking, calculating his reply. "My TARDIS," he began, then corrected himself: "My...transport."

"I know about the TARDIS," Sam interjected.

The Doctor frowned, but continued. "My TARDIS has a translation circuit," he said. "Wherever I go she helps me and Rose understand what's said to us, and translates our speech in turn."

"So why did it let _me_ understand the demon?" asked Sam.

The Doctor shook his head, not taking his eyes off of Sam. "I can't say I know," he replied. "I'd be interested to find out, though. She's right outside this time, but just the proximity shouldn't be enough to—"

"Sammy?" All three, the two Hunters and the demon, turned to the sound of Dean's sleepy voice. He walked into the kitchen, squinting his eyes against the light, and his eyes fell right on the Doctor. "Crap."

"It's okay, Dean, he just saved Bobby," Sam said hurriedly before Dean could pick up a weapon and make the Doctor angry.

"And I was just leaving," the Doctor added. He eyed Dean curiously for a moment, and then a look of sadness overcame his face. "Oh," he breathed.

"Oh?" Dean echoed, wary. "Oh what?"

The Doctor didn't acknowledge that Dean had spoken, but simply said, "Have a good evening", and slipped out the doorway. A moment later came the sound of the TARDIS disappearing.

The Hunters stood in the kitchen, still until the sound had faded. "I was possessed," Bobby said, his voice flat. With trembling hands he pulled his amulet out from his shirt. "That shouldn't be possible." He turned to Sam, his eyes wide and frightened. "What did he to do me, Sam?"

Sam walked to the table and sat down heavily. Dean and Bobby joined him, Dean still looking half-asleep. "I was gonna shoot you, Bobby," Sam said quietly.

"Good," said Bobby. "Good. It's what I would've wanted you to do."

"But he came in right before I pulled the trigger, and told me he'd get you back," Sam continued. "He talked to the demon. It...I could hear it this time, Dean, I could understand it. It wasn't just static. That was it talking. And it said that it was lost, and in the dark. Before he got there it said I had to bring it the Storm. It meant the Doctor."

"So the Doc came in and exorcised it?" Dean asked. Sam shook his head.

"No. It was like he said with Sally. He went up to Bobby and spoke to the demon, told it that he'd help it if it left Bobby alone. Then the demon passed from Bobby to the Doctor, but it didn't possess him. He said...he said he had enough room in his head for the both of them." Sam propped his head up in his hands. It felt too full. "Bobby, why hasn't he done anything yet?"

"What do you mean?" Bobby asked.

"Why hasn't he hurt us? Or tried to? If that's what he wants, why hasn't he made a move?" Sam asked, his voice rising with tension. "I don't understand. This isn't how this works."

"Are you complaining because the big demon _hasn't_ attacked us yet?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "Because that seems a little like looking a gift horse in the mouth."

Sam shook his head, stood up violently, and grabbed the Colt from the bag. "I'm going find him," he said.

"Don't be stupid, Sammy," Dean shouted, grabbing his arm. Sam shook his older brother off, pulling himself up to his full height.

"Don't try to stop me," Sam warned. "Dean, let me do this. I have the Colt. I won't let him hurt me."

"Sam, your brother's right," said Bobby. "Leave it be, son. Be glad he let us go. We weren't prepared."

Sam stood for a moment, wrestling with himself. But his frustration overcame his fear, and he stormed out the door, ignoring the protests of his brother and foster-father.

He walked into the middle of the salvage yard and looked up at the night sky, hanging over him like a suffocating blanket. It had never looked so vast before, so empty. An alien. People thought this Doctor was an alien. Could he be? No, that was ridiculous.

As ridiculous as "demon hunter" being Sam's job title?

"Doctor!" he cried, waving the Colt. "Doctor!"

His voice rang in the quiet country night, fading into the emptiness. He scowled at the silence. "_Doctor_!" he cried.

Nothing. Just the sound of crickets, owls. Night noises. No _whoosh_ of the TARDIS, no witty, dry comment from the Doctor appearing right behind him. He didn't know why he'd expected otherwise.

He sat down on the ground, suddenly and stupefyingly exhausted. He held the Colt cradled in his hands and watched it. Would it kill the Doctor, if it came to that? Or was he immune to that, too?

Not for the first time, Sam found himself cursing his father. Of all the things he chose to be cryptic about in his journal, he had to pick the Doctor and the Shadow Proclamation. He had to pick the one being who would make the least sense to his sons. Werewolves? Easy. Hand Sam the right weapons and there was no question about what to do. Vampires? Obviously harder but still straight-forward. Even the yellow-eyed demon, once they'd had the weapon it took, was a no-brainer. But this Doctor?

He'd had so many opportunities to kill them. But the worst he'd done was place Rose to keep them from killing the demon in Sally. Well, the worst he'd done was blown Dean's gun up, but Dean did shoot him. So that was...understandable. And he had given Dean that gel to heal his hand right after, and sounded honestly regretful.

Maybe he needed them alive for whatever this Shadow Proclamation wanted to do with them. But even then, why not just take them from Ellen's? If he was as powerful as everybody said he was, couldn't he have just overtaken them, stuffed them into his TARDIS and zipped off through time or...whatever it was the phone booth did? But he didn't.

Sam buried his face in his hands. It was too much. It was all too much, even in the middle of a lifetime of _too much_.

"I'm not feeling inclined to come too much closer, while you're waving that around."

Sam didn't turn. He heard, after a moment, the Doctor's footsteps as the demon walked up to him. He put the Colt on the ground in front of himself, still within arm's reach, but out of his hand. "I didn't hear your ship," Sam said.

The Doctor arrived next to him, standing with his hands in his pockets, squinting up at the sky. Sam saw him out of his peripheral vision, but kept his head turned towards the ground. "Well," the Doctor said. "I just parked her 'round back. I figured you'd have questions."

Sam nodded with a dry, hollow laugh. He felt the Doctor's gaze turn to him. "Yeah. I have a couple of questions," he said. "For starters, what the hell do you want with me and my brother?"

The Doctor sighed. Sam looked up at him, and the demon's face was tilted up at the sky, and bathed in the moonlight and starlight he looked...older, stranger than Sam had thought him. Less human. "You are on a dangerous path, Samuel Winchester. There are things out there that you haven't been allowed to understand, rules you haven't been taught. You and your brother...you are doing as well as you've been given the tools to. I don't want you punished for that."

"Punished by who?" Sam asked. The Doctor looked down at him, and shook his head.

"The Shadow Proclamation is, by and large, a good thing," the Doctor began slowly. "They keep order. They protect the weak. They maintain the balance of...everything." _Not what he was going to say_, Sam thought. "But they're old, and set in their ways. Sometimes shades of gray are difficult for them to see."

"And we're a shade of gray for them," Sam finished.

The Doctor hesitated. "There's...I can't..." He trailed off, his brow furrowed in frustration.

"You can't tell me, because you promised Dad you wouldn't," Sam said, feeling his face flush with anger. He swung himself up standing, and faced the Doctor. He glared down at him, and the demon watched him warily. "Well, I don't give a _damn_ what my dad wanted, at this point. I was a _kid_ when he told you that. He's gone. It's just me and Dean now, and we need any information we can get." The Doctor's gaze was unwavering, and Sam looked away. "He's not here to protect us anymore," Sam muttered.

"I know," the Doctor said softly. He watched Sam for a moment, then turned back to look at the stars once more. Sam snuck another glance at him like that. The dim, silver light illuminated the planes and angles of his face, reflected off the lenses of his glasses. Sam had felt small against the vastness of the sky. The Doctor simply looked lonely. "Samuel," he said suddenly, "before you make a decision about whether or not you want me to tell you what I promised your father I wouldn't, would you like to hear why he asked me not to tell you?"

Sam nodded, surprised.

The Doctor squared his shoulders and looked out across the salvage yard, his eyes distant. "What is it that you do, Samuel?" he asked.

"I...fight demons. Ghosts. Werewolves. Vampires. Monsters," Sam replied. "I protect innocent people."

"And these monsters. What do they have in common?"

Sam hesitated, knowing instantly the answer that the Doctor was looking for. "They're not human," he said, deciding against mincing words. "And they're evil," he added, a little defensively.

"What do they want, these monsters?"

Sam knit his brows, confused. "I mean, to hurt people. They want to hurt people. For different reasons...to feed, to get stronger, because they can."

The Doctor nodded as though that confirmed his suspicions. "Yes. And what if that weren't the reason?"

Sam said nothing.

"What if they weren't necessarily evil? The creature that overtook your friend in the house. She spoke to you, said she was lost, afraid. What if she weren't the only one?"

Sam continued to say nothing, but shivered. If demons weren't evil, if they weren't all uniformly black-hats, what was he doing?

"Shades of gray," the Doctor said. "Things are sometimes...more complicated than they appear. Do you want shades of gray in your life, Samuel? Your father didn't. He said your lives were hard enough as it was."

Sam stared at the Doctor. "Who are you?" he asked in a quiet, rough voice. "Really?"

The Doctor met his eyes evenly, but with an intensity that almost made Sam step back. "If I tell you that, I will have to tell you everything," he said. "So make your decision, Samuel Winchester. Do you want those shades of gray?"

Sam passed a hand over his face. Did he? He didn't know. Whatever the Doctor was about to tell him could change everything. His father thought so, at least. _Your lives were hard enough as it was_. Yeah, their lives were hard. That was the truth. But how could they be made any easier by staying in the dark?

"I want to understand," he said, finally.

The Doctor nodded, and Sam could swear he looked pleased.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: I've got one more chapter after this that's completed, so after that one updates will hopefully be pretty much at the same rate, but I can't make guarantees! I will finish this story, though, don't fear. I know where it's going, I just have to get there. So let me know what's working and what's not, what you want to see more of...reviews and PMs make me a happy gal.  
Also what is this stuff with story covers, I don't even.

Allons-y!

* * *

The Doctor dug around in his pocket for a moment, and came up with a stethoscope. Sam looked quizzically at it. No way that fit into his pocket without making a lump. He almost missed it when the Doctor tossed it to him, but grabbed it at the last moment. He frowned.

"Listen to my heart," the Doctor said, beckoning him with an almost friendly gesture. Slowly, cautiously, Sam obeyed, and pressed the cold disc of the stethoscope against the left side of the Doctor's chest. A normal heartbeat, he guessed, although he was no medical doctor. He met the Doctor's eyes, and shrugged.

"What am I listening for?" he said.

The Doctor smiled, and took the chest piece in his fingers. He moved it to the right side of his chest. Sam jumped when he heard another heartbeat, as clear and strong as the first. "Binary vascular system," the Doctor explained. "All Gallifreyans had it."

"Gallifreyans?" Sam echoed, staring at the spot where the Doctor's second heart must be.

"My people." The darkness in the Doctor's voice drew Sam's eyes to his face, where he saw that the Doctor's eyes had gotten that distant look in them again.

"Bobby said there weren't any other dem...any others like you," Sam said.

The Doctor cracked a smile that had nothing to do with humor or happiness. "Bobby was right," he said. "But it wasn't always that way. And there's something more important in what you said. Or, should I say, almost said."

Sam winced. He knew he hadn't caught himself in time. But even after all the weirdness he'd experienced, it was uncomfortable to call a creature standing right there in front of you, just having a conversation, a _god_.

"I'm not a demon," the Doctor was saying. "Gallifreyan...it's not a kind of demon."

"Then what are you?" asked Sam, absolutely not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

The Doctor looked at him, and his demeanor changed instantly. He grinned, and rocked on the balls of his feet. "Would you like to see my TARDIS, Samuel?" he asked. Sam hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Brilliant! This will be much easier from the TARDIS."

Sam picked up the Colt as the Doctor turned away from him, already walking deeper into the salvage yard. He made sure the safety was on and slid it into the back of his jeans. Just in case.

He had to walk briskly to keep up with the Doctor, and even though he knew that he was probably walking into a trap, the Doctor's enthusiasm was infectious. He couldn't help but feel a little bit excited about whatever it was he was going to see.

The phone booth stood there, amidst the junked cars, looking (as always) totally normal. The Doctor looked back to make sure Sam was watching, and snapped his fingers. The doors opened, and golden light poured out of the box. "Samuel Winchester," he said, "welcome to the TARDIS."

He opened the door and swung himself inside. Sam was pretty sure they wouldn't both fit, but decided to humor the maybe-god. He stepped inside.

"Oh, my god," he gasped.

From _much_ farther away than he had any right to be, the Doctor beamed at Sam. "Please say it," he said. "I love it when they say it."

"It's...it's _bigger_ on the _inside_," Sam stammered, turning in a circle to view the whole thing. The walls rose up impossibly high for the ten-foot box, bronze and covered in huge rivets. Columns and support beams stood around him like giants, and things protruded from the walls that looked almost organic. In the center, at the top of the ramp leading from the door where he stood, was a massive console with a shining column leading up to the ceiling. It was covered in knobs, buttons, levers, screens, a couple of hammers and what looked to be a horn. A low humming surrounded him. He looked to the opposite side of the room, and Rose stood at the entrance to a hallway, leaning on the wall. She waved at him with a smile. She looked relieved.

The Doctor laughed delightedly. "Yes! Bigger on the inside! Dimensionally transcendental, as I like to say. She's brilliant, isn't she? Okay. Now I'm going to plug in some coordinates and I want you to hang on tight. Watch Rose, she knows what she's doing, she's fantastic with this stuff."

Rose walked up to him, smiling that cute smile where she stuck out her tongue just a little. "Hey, Sam," she said, as the Doctor raced in circles around the console, hitting buttons and pulling levers, checking screens.

"Hey," he said breathlessly. She laughed.

"It's a bit much the first time," she said, looking around the room. "Once you get past _bigger on the inside_ it gets easier."

"This is his...time machine?" he asked.

Rose nodded, running her hand along a rail fondly. "She is," she said, and Sam thought briefly that it was the first time he'd heard a woman refer to a vehicle as feminine. Usually it was just Dean. "His time machine, his space ship, his home."

"Space ship?" Sam exclaimed, and Rose looked stricken, turning to the Doctor. He'd frozen at the console, and shook his head.

"We'll get to that in a minute, Samuel!" he shouted, and resumed his activities.

"What do you mean, space ship?" Sam insisted, and Rose bit her lip.

"Better let the Doctor explain that one," she said. "It gets a little confus—"

"Hang on!" the Doctor cried, throwing a lever. Rose gripped the rail, and after a moment Sam followed suit. "Allons-y!"

The whole room shook, and if Sam had taken another second to grab the rail he would've been thrown. As it was he barely held on, while the Doctor laughed like a maniac and Rose grinned next to him. Past his nausea, he regretted coming with the Doctor. Wherever they were taking him, it couldn't be good.

Eventually the ship (and his stomach) settled, and with shaking hands he released his grip on the rail. Rose had already run up to the Doctor, checking screens with him. "Where are we, Doctor?" she asked.

"Cygnus Loop, Samuel's present," the Doctor replied absently, apparently checking read-outs on the console. "One of the most beautiful places in the universe." Satisfied, he turned to Sam with that deranged grin. "Follow me," he said, and strode towards the door.

"The Cygnus Loop?" Sam echoed, walking behind the Doctor, and the Doctor nodded. "Isn't that...a nebula?"

"Right you are!" the Doctor crowed, and gripped the handle of the door.

Sam felt his chest tighten, and put his hand against the door quickly, holding it shut. The Doctor looked up at him with a frown. "If we're in..."—_this was ridiculous—_"..._space_, and you open the door, won't the oxygen be sucked out?"

The puzzled look on the Doctor's face transformed into a bright smile. "Yes, that's right! Well, would be if we were anywhere but on the TARDIS. Good thinking, though, Samuel, quite right. But not to worry. The TARDIS will protect us." He pulled the door open, and Sam gripped the rail again, bracing himself to fight being sucked into the vacuum of space.

But he wasn't. He stared out the door, and took an unconscious step towards it. He caught himself, his heart racing, and turned to the Doctor. The other man smiled at him. "You can step outside if you like," he said, his voice warm and bright with excitement. "I'll keep hold of you. You'll lose gravity, but she won't let you suffocate."

Sam looked to Rose, who nodded and grinned at him. He shook his head, not believing he was about to do this, but what the hell. If they wanted him dead, he was going to die one way or another.

What a magnificent way to die this would be, though.

"Just step out," the Doctor said. "I'll catch your ankle."

Sam took a deep breath, and stepped outside.

There was only a moment of panic before he felt the Doctor's hand around his ankle, but he didn't even look back to make sure he'd caught him firmly. The view was too amazing.

He didn't think he'd be able to see the colors like he did in pictures back on Earth (_back on Earth?_), but maybe whatever field was keeping the air in was also helping him see it like this. The waves and veils of yellow, pink, blue, green, and orange reminded him of the most vivid sunsets he'd ever seen in pictures, but set against the inky blackness of space, it was even more spectacular. And there it was, right in front of him. He had no doubt in his mind that it was real. He was in front of the Cygnus Loop, floating outside of a space ship. He inhaled a lungful of impossible air and wished Dean were here to see this.

He felt a tug on his ankle, and looked down. "Ready to come back in?" the Doctor asked. Sam nodded regretfully, and the Doctor pulled him back into the TARDIS.

Once he was returned to gravity, he rubbed his face vigorously with his hands, as though to wake himself up from a dream. He looked back out the door, though, and the Cygnus Loop was still there. "So we're in space," he said slowly.

"That we are, Samuel Winchester!" the Doctor replied, beaming. "One of the most beautiful places in existence at this time in history. It's always been a favorite of mine."

"Are you trying to tell me that you're an alien?" Sam asked before his brain had given permission.

What he expected was for the Doctor to look at him like he was crazy, and make some kind of dismissive, condescending remark. What he didn't expect was for the Doctor to say, "That's exactly what I'm telling you."

"You're not a demon, not a god, but an immortal, time-traveling alien," Sam said, fully aware of how much he sounded like his brother. "Just making sure I understand."

"_God_?" Rose cackled, doubling over with laughter. The Doctor shot her an annoyed look. "Him, a god? Oh, that's brilliant. Worst god _ever_."

"Oi! I'd make a fine god," the Doctor said, sounding put out. "Accessible, good-natured, and I think pretty fair."

"Never on time, can't show up on the planet he intends to, _and_ scared of my mum," Rose shot back, folding her arms, barely containing her laughter. "We'd end up with Jackie Tyler calling the shots, and that's Apocalypse material for sure." The Doctor glared at her, but a grin threatened at the edges of his mouth.

"Hey!" The two of them stopped immediately at Sam's voice, sobering. "Look, if you don't mind interrupting your flirting, maybe somebody could help me understand what's going on instead of letting me try to process the fact that _aliens exist_ by myself."

The Doctor's face fell. "I'm sorry, Samuel. You're right. And you were right before. Immortal might be an overstatement, but...very old. Time traveling and alien, absolutely. And definitely neither a demon nor a god."

"And the thing that possessed Bobby. That was an alien, too?" Sam asked.

"Yes," replied the Doctor. "Her name was"—that staticky sort of noise the Doctor had made while talking to the demon...the alien—"and she's a"—more of the same sound. "Apparently she and a number of her people have been stranded on Earth. They're not sure how. But they're noncorporeal beings and can't interact with anything physical without a host body. That's why she..._possessed_ Robert, and why the other one possessed Sally at the diner. They're simply trying to find help."

"That's why you put Rose there, to stop us from killing the one in Sally," Sam said slowly. "Because it didn't deserve it."

"It's more than that," the Doctor said. "It's..._bigger_. It goes higher up. I just can't figure it. It's too perfect for a coincidence. John Winchester's boys, happening to be in the same town where a lost alien mimics demonic possession? No. I'm missing something, I know I am. Someone is trying to bait you, Samuel, to goad you into killing innocent beings. I just can't see it."

"But the point," Rose prompted gently.

The Doctor looked startled, then nodded. "Right! The point is that Rose was there to stop you and your brother from being prosecuted by the Shadow Proclamation for provoking an intergalactic incident."

"Like you stopped Jo," Sam added.

The Doctor brightened. "Yes! Precisely."

Sam shook his head, furrowing his brow. "I don't understand. Why wouldn't Dad want us to know that there were aliens? I mean, _you_ could have been helping us. Or at least giving us information. What not to kill, you know? Why didn't Dad want us to know?"

The Doctor hesitated. "Ah. Well. This is the hard part." He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up more, if that was possible. "Samuel, this is not going to be easy to hear."

"It's not gonna be easier if you beat around the bush," Sam snapped, anxiety churning in his stomach.

The Doctor frowned, surprised, then shrugged. "Fair enough. Let me tell you a story. There was a planet, ages ago, where a race of semi-corporeal beings lived. They had some intergalactic travel, but their planet was barely past a Class 5."

"That's what Earth is," Rose clarified. "Class 5. Pre- and just post-first contact."

"They were taking their first transgalactic explorations," the Doctor continued, "when the War began."

The Doctor stopped for a moment, and despite his better instincts, Sam said, "What war?"

"The Last Great Time War," the Doctor murmured. "Bloody. Terrible. Planets were destroyed, entire species wiped out, timelines demolished. This planet that I'm talking about, it was destroyed during the War. Their people who had left, they had nothing to return to. And they never had. The entire War was time-locked once it was...finished, so their planet had never existed at all once it was over."

Sam tried to make sense of this, but failed. "I don't understand. If their planet never existed, how did they still exist?"

The Doctor waved a hand dismissively. "Time is a lot less linear than you'd think. Causality...less important. It's very complicated. Not the point, either. This race, they had to find somewhere to live."

Sam's eyes widened. "Earth."

The Doctor nodded. "They arrived on your planet before you lot started recording your histories. They embedded themselves in your cultures, in your psyches. They became whatever you wanted them to become. They took the name _demon_, because you gave it to them."

His heart stopped. So this was why his father had wanted to keep this from them. _Our lives are hard enough as it is. _If demons were not the incarnation of evil, not unfathomable creatures from the depths of lore, but _aliens_...then what? Aliens who'd been on Earth for millennia...did that even make them aliens, anymore? Or were they just another race, at this point? Did that make what they did hunting, or murder?

"So demons are aliens," Sam whispered. A thought occurred to him, and he grasped it as a distraction. "What about werewolves?"

"Lupine wavelength haemovariforms," the Doctor replied, his gaze assessing Sam, no doubt looking for signs of an impending nervous breakdown. "Nasty, those. Rose and I ran into one in Scotland in the 1870's. Blood-transmitted extraterrestrial parasite."

"Vampires."

The Doctor's eyes became hard. "There are no vampires."

Sam laughed. "Yeah, there are. Dean and I fought some last year."

"That is absolutely imposs— " The Doctor broke off, his eyes narrowed in thought. "Wait. What did they look like?"

"Human," Sam said. "I mean, nasty teeth, but...mostly human."

The Doctor relaxed visibly. "Hybrids," he said. "The Great Vampires were destroyed by my people. We made sure of that. But there are hybrid forms of them that do exist in the universe."

Sam didn't understand, but didn't press it. "Okay. Ghosts."

"Energetic impressions on the psionic fabric of Earth," the Doctor shot back. "Usually strong Silverberg energy signals."

"Could that be picked up by an EMF reader?" Sam asked, suddenly intrigued.

"Oh, sure," the Doctor said. "Absolutely. In fact, an EMF reader would be a very good indicator of large stores of Silverberg—"

"If you boys are done geeking out," Rose interrupted, "don't we have a planet to get Sam back to?"

The Doctor looked surprised. "Well. I suppose so." He turned to Sam, a cautious, hopeful look in his eyes. "You are taking this..._extremely_ well," he said.

"I'm not," Sam said with a weak grin. "I just learned a long time ago that panic attacks get people killed." The smile slipped, and he sagged, bracing himself against the railing as the weight of what the Doctor told him hit him. He met the alien's (_alien's?_) eyes. "Doctor, what does that make me?"

The Doctor didn't speak for a moment, but Sam knew that he understood the question. He stepped up to the door, opening it again to face the Cygnus Loop, and past it the infinity of space. Sam had to strain to hear him when he finally said, "It makes you a man who does what he has to do, Samuel."

"Am I a murderer?" Sam pressed. "Is my brother? Was my father? I thought what we did was...righteous."

The Doctor's shoulders tensed, but he didn't turn around. "There's a part of the story I left out," he said. "You deserve the whole truth."

In the moment of silence that followed, Sam walked up to the Doctor, standing uncomfortably at the other door. He could see the alien's profile, again star-lit, surreal against the backdrop of stars and nebula. His eyes shone with something dark and frightening. "The War was fought largely by two races," he said softly. "The Daleks, and the Time Lords."

"The Time Lords?" Sam echoed. The Doctor smiled bitterly.

"My people," he said. "It was a war between my people and the Daleks, for the fate of the universe. Sounds melodramatic, I know, but that's what was at stake when two species that could manipulate time fought. There were races that aligned themselves with us, or with them, and races that kept out of it. And of course, many, many races who were unaware of the fighting. Your people, for example."

"Were we even...you know...evolved, back then?" Sam asked haltingly.

The Doctor glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "The War took place across all points of time," he replied. "You were evolved and not evolved and extinct, all during the War. Like I said. Complicated. But as I was saying. Some races sided with us, some with the Daleks." He paused, Sam thought perhaps for effect. "The people that would become your demons sided with the Daleks.

"They were brutal, even before the War. A vicious people. The Shadow Proclamation had taken action against them several times, as had we. They were fond of time manipulation, of harming weaker races, even in the few centuries they'd had of interplanetary travel. So when the time came, they sided with the race most like themselves. The Daleks...their only thought is to destroy everything that they deem inferior. Which is, well, everything and everyone. That should fit pretty well with your experience with demons, doesn't it?"

Sam barked out a single laugh, and the Doctor nodded understandingly. He stopped for a moment, as though gathering his courage, and added, "I want you to know this, Samuel. However many demons you've killed, you and your brother can never touch the numbers that my people killed."

Sam froze, and stared at the Doctor while his mind processed what he'd just heard. "It was you," he said. "_You_ destroyed their planet."

"Not me personally," the Doctor corrected. "But my people. The demons, with the Daleks, would have wiped out every living creature in the universe. There was nothing else we could do. It was war." He met Sam's eyes pointedly, but Sam had to look away. He understood. And now he knew what it was he'd seen in the Doctor's eyes as he stood facing the nebula. The darkness of a Hunter.

He took a deep breath, passing a hand over his eyes. "I can't tell Dean," he said at the same instant he realized it.

The Doctor shrugged, but Sam could see the slump in his shoulders. Disappointment. "That's your choice and his," he replied. "But if he asks me, Samuel, I'll give him the same courtesy I gave you."

Sam shook his head. "He's...he's too much Dad's. He won't ask. If Dad didn't want him to know, that'll be enough for him." _I hope_ was the unspoken final comment. Dean wouldn't be able to handle this. He was too parochial, too practical, for all the impracticality of their lives. Demons, witches, djinn, he could handle. Aliens...that would be too much. He took a final glance out the door. "I have one more question, Doctor."

"Ask away," the Doctor said.

He gathered his nerve, and said, "How did you...see me having my vision? How did you talk to me during it?"

The Doctor's eyes lit up. "Ah, yes! Glad you asked. Fascinating stuff, precognition. Not precisely what it's commonly thought to be. It's not that you're seeing the future, not exactly. It's more a matter of temporal instability."

Sam blinked. "What?"

The Doctor ran his hands through his hair. Maybe the static electricity generated by the impressive height and thickness of it helped him think better? "Think of it like this: when you're having a vision, your mind is momentarily adrift in time. For a bit, you're not stuck in a linear experiential circuit, but are allowed to move more freely throughout the fourth dimension. It's not a prediction...it's an experience you're having in another time."

"But sometimes we can change it," Sam said.

"Time is mutable," the Doctor agreed. "Multiple possible timelines exist for every possible reaction that each living creature has to any action. Some events are fixed points in time, but they're few and far between, and only exist as...lynch-pins in causality. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii, for example. You're seeing a possibility—but only one of many."

"Well, that's reassuring from a free-will point of view," Sam said thoughtfully. "But what you're saying is that when I have a vision, I'm...out of time?"

"You're _adrift_ in time," the Doctor repeated. "You're not anchored in the time that your linear experiential timeline would mandate. It can't harm you—obviously. Rose here's been out of her timeline for years now. And you're not as out of whack as she is, even. Just a little...unstable."

"Is that why your ship is translating in my head for me?" Sam asked.

The Doctor stilled, studying Sam for a moment. "No," he replied carefully. "It's not _why_ the TARDIS is translating for you. But I am convinced that it _is_ connected, if only I could figure it out."

Sam took a deep breath, shaking his head. Too much to process. "I need to go home."

There was silence for a moment, and the Doctor slowly closed the door. "Then I'd suggest finding a place to hang on again," he said. "You know it's a bumpy ride." With that he walked up to the console and began putting in the coordinates.

Sam sat down on the walkway, gripping the railing loosely. Rose came and sat next to him. "You okay?" she asked.

Sam started to say _yes_, then stopped himself. "Not really," he said, surprised by his own honesty. "Yeah. Not really at all."

Rose nodded, understanding. "First time I met the Doctor, I was about to be killed by store mannequins," she said lightly. Sam looked at her, and her face was placid, but her eyes were shining. "I was a shop girl from Peckham. I would've just...died. But then this absolute mad man grabs my wrist with this bonkers grin on his face and goes _run_! And I did." She smiled. "Haven't stopped since."

"Guess I had one up on you there," Sam admitted. "At least I already got past _demons exist_."

"Yeah, bloody right!" Rose laughed. Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw the Doctor look over at her and smile before going back to work. "I went from _that'll be five quid_ to Gelth and Slitheen in less than a week. Talk about a learning curve." She laughed again, and Sam tried to join her, but couldn't quite muster it. She trailed off, watching him. He evened out his expression, not wanting her pity. She nudged his arm with her shoulder. "Hey. For what it's worth, I think you and your brother are really brave."

"Yeah?" Sam smirked. "That's saying a lot from Miss Shop-Girl-turned-Time-Traveler." He glanced at her, and saw that she was serious. He sobered.

"I mean it. Me? I've got him." She gestured to the Doctor, who seemed to be having a problem with something and was attempting to cajole the TARDIS into bringing them back. "If it was me and Mickey, alone against the Slitheen? Worse—me and my _mum_? I'd've gone daft. But you and your brother, you've got no Doctor. You just saw something bad and scary and decided _oh, probably ought to run after that_." She shrugged. "Even with the Doctor, we usually run _away_."

"Well, you know what they say about discretion," Sam muttered, embarrassed by her praise. When she frowned, he raised his eyebrows. "That it's the better part of valor...?"

Rose looked pensive for a moment. She'd obviously never heard that saying before. "Yeah, that ought to be the Doctor's motto," she said thoughtfully. "But you boys, you just keep after it. We land in trouble. You find it. No TARDIS, no sonic screwdriver, just...guts and guns." She lowered her voice, confidential. "He hates guns, but I've gotta tell you, I wish I had one sometimes."

Sam said nothing, but leaned a little more on the railing. He didn't know how to respond to her, but he couldn't pretend he wasn't pleased to hear what she said. Ever since they'd met the Doctor he felt off-kilter, suddenly not sure where he stood. The Doctor and Rose...they seemed like they understood everything, and gave him information as they felt he ought to have it. But Rose was right. It was easier, he guessed, when you had someone like the Doctor on your side. He and Dean were just two humans. Doing their best. _Doing what you have to do_, the Doctor had said.

Maybe that would be enough in this new world.

As the TARDIS started to rock again, he found himself more comfortable with it already.


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note: This chapter is a little on the short side, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in brother angst.  
Also I'm happy to say that my writer's block broke, and updates should continue on more or less the same schedule! Thanks for the reviews, favorites, and alerts, and keep them coming; I love hearing what you think.

* * *

When the door opened to the TARDIS, Sam's heart sank. Sunlight came pouring in through the doors. He _knew_ it had been evening—early evening—when they'd left.

"How long have we been gone?" he asked, panicked. Dean was going to kill him. Dean was going to kill _everyone_.

The Doctor scowled at the read-outs, then turned to Sam with a smile plastered on his face. "Oh, probably only a few hours," he said. Sam knew it was a lie. He spent enough time lying to recognize the tells.

"Doctor, _how long_?" he repeated.

The Doctor winced. "Approximately thirty-six hours," he confessed.

"Oh, my god," Sam groaned, pressing the heel of his hand against his temple. "Dean is going to go _insane_." He looked at Rose, who had an uncharitable expression of amusement on her face. "You guys might not want to stick around. Seriously. Let me handle him."

"What, and miss the chance to be yelled at by _the_ Dean Winchester?" the Doctor asked, sounding shocked. "Never! I understand he's brought yelling at people to an art form."

"Yeah, and he also has a trunk full of weapons," Sam pointed out.

"Well, yes," the Doctor replied, "but you've got the only one equipped with a molecular destabiliser, so unless somebody lets slip about the binary vascular system bit, he probably won't kill me, and if he was going to hurt Rose he'd've done it last time."

Sam unconsciously grabbed the Colt. "Equipped with a _what_?" he exclaimed.

"Molecular destabiliser. Don't know how Samuel Colt got a hold of that kind of technology, but it's extremely advanced and extremely powerful," the Doctor said. "That's why it kills anything you point it at, as long as its wavelength is set correctly. And of course, right now it's set for demons." He eyed the gun warily. "Not that many things are likely to survive it, even with an improper wavelength setting."

Sam looked down at the gun, suddenly more impressed with it. Alien technology. Huh. "Well, Colt or no Colt, I don't think you guys should come with me," he said.

The Doctor folded his arms. "Samuel, you don't think it would be worse for you to come wandering back in, alone, after a day and a half missing, babbling about having gone to space?" he said. "Your brother will think I scrambled your brains."

"He'll think you did anyway," Sam argued, but realized that it was a losing fight. He sighed. "Fine, your funeral. I'd better go in before Dean does something stupid. Assuming he hasn't already."

Sam led the three of them outside, and as he stepped out the doors, the Doctor said behind him, "I think you underestimate your brother."

Sam bristled, but kept walking. "I don't need a lecture on my family from you," he said stiffly.

A pause, then, "Very well."

The walk from the TARDIS to Bobby's seemed long. Really long. Like, marching up to the guillotine long. He flipped in his head through various things he might say to Bobby and Dean to make them believe he'd gone willingly, and then began to imagine the tests they'd put him through to convince themselves he wasn't possessed. It wasn't going to be a simple splash in the face with holy water, that was for sure.

As he reached the steps, he turned back to the Doctor and Rose. "At least let me go first," he said, and the Doctor nodded. The two of them stopped at the bottom stop while Sam knocked on the door.

He heard the shotgun being pumped, and rolled his eyes. This was going to suck.

The big wooden door creaked open, and Bobby peered out with one eye. "Who is it?" he snapped, then stopped. He opened the door wider. "Sam?"

"Hey, Bobby," Sam said weakly. He managed a grimace. "Sorry about the...taking off."

Bobby opened the door the rest of the way, aiming the shotgun at Sam's head. "Dean! Get your ass over here," he shouted. "Sam's back."

Sam heard Dean's heavy footfalls from the back of the house as he ran to the door. "Is he okay?" his brother demanded, and as he came into vision he saw the flask of holy water and what appeared to be a silver knife. Sam stifled a groan.

"Looks to be," Bobby said, "but your buddies are here with him." He shot a suspicious glare at the Doctor, who waggled his fingers amiably with a sunny grin. Rose fixed the Doctor with a disapproving glance, but said nothing.

Dean walked right up to the screen door, studying Sam warily. "Sammy? They hurt you?" he asked, his voice rough.

Sam sighed. "No, Dean. I'm fine. I went with them willingly."

"For two goddamn days?" Dean cried. "You couldn't have stopped back in to pick up your overnight bag?"

Sam started to say something smart back, then caught himself. Dean was rightfully worried. If the shoe had been on the other foot, he'd be furious, too. "Look, what people say about the phone booth is true, okay? It's a time machine. And apparently, the good Doctor over here isn't awesome at steering it."

"Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed behind him, then grunted as, Sam assumed, Rose drove an elbow into his side. He was quiet after that.

"We were supposed to be back before you noticed," Sam continued, "but we ended up...obviously late."

Dean shook his head slowly. "I'm just supposed to believe that, Sammy?" he asked. "You go waltzing off with a demon Dad _specifically_ told us not to trust, you're gone for almost two days, and you come back with a story about him overshooting the landing with his time machine? I'm supposed to just buy that?"

Sam balled his fists, gritting his teeth. "Then give me the damn flask and I'll take a swig, or nick me with the knife, or whatever it is you need to do, but I'm telling the truth," he said. "And I've learned some stuff that might be useful, so if you want to let me in, maybe I could share."

Dean did nothing for a moment but stare at him, watching for any sign of wrongness. He cracked the door open and shoved the flask at Sam without a word. Sam scowled at it, but took it from his brother and uncapped it. Not looking away from Dean the whole time, he took a long swallow of the stale, salty holy water. He put the flask down and recapped it. "Okay?" he said, holding the flask out.

"Give me your arm," Dean said quietly.

It stung. The doubt. The hint of fear he saw at the back of his brother's eyes—his brother, who was the one person he needed, more than anyone else, to believe in him. So he held out his arm, and braced himself for the cut. He barely winced when it came.

Dean took the knife back, wiping it on his jeans, and handed it to Bobby. Then he opened the door, stood in front of Sam for a moment, and suddenly embraced him.

Sam was startled, but returned the embrace, uncomfortable with the sudden show of affection. Dean was more emotional than he'd like people to think, but not usually in front of anybody. It was especially surprising in front of the Doctor. "I was scared, Sammy," Dean muttered. "I thought he'd gotten you. I thought you were gone."

What he wanted to say was _It's not what you think._ What he said was "I'm fine, Dean. It's okay."

Dean broke away, clapping Sam on the shoulder, and quickly looking away. Sam knew why. But what he didn't expect was for Dean to walk down the steps and grab the Doctor by the collar of his coat.

"Dean, stop it!" Sam shouted, but the Doctor glanced at him, just briefly, and his eyes told Sam to leave it. Sam quieted, but couldn't release the tension from his shoulders. He'd seen too many different sides of the Doctor while at the Cygnus Loop to know what to think. Dean was a powder keg, especially right now, and he didn't know how stupid was too stupid when confronting the Doctor.

"You listen to me, you son of a bitch. If you did something to my kid brother, I will hunt you down and make you beg for death before I'm done," Dean growled. The Doctor didn't flinch, but stared at Dean in a way that made Sam think of a man solving complex mathematical equations. "Do you hear me? You leave him alone. Don't you touch him again—don't you _look_ at him funny again." When the Doctor still said nothing, Dean shook him. "Are you hearing me, demon boy?" he shouted.

"How long do you have left?"

Dean froze. The Doctor's voice had barely been audible to Sam. The question wasn't for effect. It was for Dean. Sam saw Rose clap her hands over her mouth out of the corner of his eye. "Shut up," Dean breathed.

The Doctor closed his eyes, pained, then looked sadly at Dean. "Not long, is it?" he asked. "I'm so sorry."

"I said shut up," Dean hissed, shoving the Doctor away. The alien staggered a step before catching himself. Rose was there to support him, but he shook his head.

"I can't undo what you've done," the Doctor said, and Sam felt like he'd been stabbed. "But I know what it is to leave people behind. If you let me help you with this, it's one less thing Sam will have to face once you're gone."

"Don't you talk about Sammy," Dean rasped. "Don't you say his name again. I don't care what you are or who you are. I don't need or want your help. What I want is for you to leave me and my brother alone, and get the hell out of our lives."

Sam saw a flash of frustration in the Doctor's eyes, and he saw him started to say something, but Rose laid a hand on his arm. "Doctor, you heard him," she said softly. "Let's go." The Doctor stared at her, and something passed between them. He slumped, just a little, and nodded.

He looked at Dean, who tensed. "I'm sorry," said the Doctor, quietly. "I really am, Dean. I wish I could change it." He then let Rose lead him away.

Sam waited for a little while after the Doctor and Rose were gone, seeing if Dean would say something or move. He didn't. He stayed standing, watching where the alien and the girl had been, totally still. So Sam walked up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder. "Dean. It's okay. They're gone."

"How the hell did he know, Sammy?" Dean asked sharply. Sam realized he was trembling. "Did you tell him?"

"I didn't, I swear," Sam replied.

"Then how?" whispered Dean. He finally turned around, and Sam saw that his brother's face was flushed. "What did he do to you, Sammy? Really?"

"We just talked," Sam said, suddenly tired. "I'm telling the truth, Dean. We just talked."

"He told you," Dean said. Sam frowned. "He told you the thing he promised Dad he wouldn't. Didn't he?"

Sam moved his mouth to respond, but found he didn't have words. It was honestly scary how well Dean could read him. "Dean—"

"Don't. I don't want to know," Dean said. "Let me just ask you this: how screwed are we?"

Sam shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, Dean. He didn't know."

Dean nodded, as though he expected nothing else. "Yeah. Figures. You go high off with the big demon and come back with jack squat." Dean walked back up the steps to the house, but Sam heard the last word he'd said under his breath: "_...hopefully._"

That was enough. Sam stormed after Dean, grabbed the back of his jacket and spun him around, shifting his grip to his brother's collar. "I don't care what you think about the Doctor. Really. I don't give a crap. But give me the _smallest_ bit of credit. I was prepared the whole time. I brought the Colt, and I found out that it can kill him. If he'd tried anything I would've blown him away." He released Dean, steadying his breathing. "I'm me, Dean. One hundred percent."

Dean shook his head sadly. "I sure hope so," he said, and walked into the house.

Sam followed him, and saw Bobby sitting at the table, watching the brothers warily. His eyes fell on Sam. "You gonna tell us what the hell happened?" he asked brusquely. "You had us worried sick, Sam."

"I know, Bobby. I'm sorry," Sam said. He sat down across the table from Bobby. "When I went off to find him, he found me. I told him I wanted some answers, so he gave me some...and he took me on his ship."

"Answers?" Bobby prompted.

Sam glanced sideways at Dean, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, pointedly not looking at either of them. "He said that the Shadow Proclamation is supposed to keep order."

"I said I don't want to hear it," snapped Dean.

"I'm not telling you what you don't want to hear," Sam shot back. "So shut up and let me get out the useful stuff." Dean rolled his eyes, but settled down. Sam rolled his in return, and Bobby cleared his throat irritably. "So the Doctor said that this Shadow Proclamation is supposed to keep order, but that they can be pretty black-and-white with their morality. And apparently some of the demons we've been fighting, they've been showing up on their radar as less-than-righteous kills. The Doctor thinks the demons we've been finding—the one that got you, Bobby—that they're some kind of bait."

"Bait for what?" Bobby asked, eyes narrowed.

"For us," Sam replied simply. "These demons...or whatever they are, they're lost. They don't want to hurt anyone. They don't even know how they got here. And the Doctor can take care of them without killing anyone. The Doctor thinks somebody's trying to get us to kill them, so the Shadow Proclamation can prosecute us."

"So this council of demons is okay with us killing demons sometimes, but sometimes it's not okay with them?" Dean asked scornfully. "Seriously?"

Sam glared at him. "I'd explain it better, but you said you didn't want to know," he snapped. "So since I have to go with the Cliff Notes version, you'll have to take my word for some of it."

"Which means the Doctor's word," Dean returned, his voice low and rough.

Sam almost knocked his chair over standing up, and walked right up to Dean, scowling down at the self-satisfied smirk on his older brother's face. "I'm getting real tired of the insinuations," he hissed.

"Sam, stop it," Bobby said, but Sam ignored him.

"You wanna say something to me? Then say it. Stop dicking around."

Dean gave a disbelieving laugh, and shook his head. "You want the truth? I'm scared for you, Sammy. I don't know what's gotten into you. You're so ready to trust this demon over Dad that you just _follow_ him into his ship, no questions asked? You had no idea what was in there! What if it had been a trap?"

"Well, it wasn't," Sam argued, but Dean wasn't done.

"All those years of training, and that's what you do? Sammy, you and me, we were born into this. You're not a kid. You should know better."

"If I'm not a kid, then stop treating me like one," Sam shouted. His eyes hardened as he decided to just say it: "And stop having me treat you like one."

It took a moment for that to sink in. Dean's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Sam ground out. "You're so scared to make a decision without Dad's approval that you'd rather just live in the dark than do something that might have upset him. Dad's dead, Dean. We have to make our own decisions now."

"Oh, so he dies and now the old man doesn't deserve our respect?" Dean exclaimed. "He doesn't deserve our _trust_? He said not to trust the Doctor, Sam. _Specifically_."

"And we're sitting here without a lot of other options," Sam said, his voice tight. "Because while Dad was kind enough to let us know that the Doctor isn't trustworthy, he didn't tell us _anything else_. At least I found out that the Colt will kill him, if it comes to that. So by taking a little risk I learned about a hundred times more than Dad decided to share with us. And you're gonna be pissed at _me_?"

Dean scowled at him and shoved past, walking back to his room. Sam stood, staring at the place where his brother had been.

After a moment Bobby's voice broke the silence. "I'm not gonna tell you how to run your family life," the older hunter said, "but kid, your brother's just tryin' to look out for you. Like he always has."

Sam shook his head. "_He's_ looking out for _me_?" He turned to face his foster father, trying to keep the desperation off of his face. "Bobby, Dean's the one going to hell in a matter of months. He's the one who needs looking out for. And I thought—" He broke off, burying his face in his hands.

"I know what you thought, Sam," Bobby said. "And I saw you when the Doctor said he couldn't help him."

"I just thought maybe, for once, we'd get lucky," Sam said softly. "Guess I should've known better."

"Boy, you've _been_ getting lucky," said Bobby. "You're alive after doing your best to piss off that Doctor character time and time again. So you go upstairs, apologize to your brother, he'll apologize to you, and the two of you sack up and figure this damn mess out."

For once, Sam didn't argue.

He walked upstairs and knocked on the door. Dean didn't say anything, so he took that as an invitation. He opened the door.

Dean was sitting on the floor, their dad's journal in front of him, open to the page about the Shadow Proclamation. He didn't look up when Sam walked in, closing the door behind him. "What," he said flatly.

"Dean—" he started, but Dean slammed the journal shut and stood up.

"You think I didn't think about it, too?" Dean demanded, and Sam closed his mouth. "You think I didn't think maybe he could get me out of my deal? I'm not stupid, Sam, and I don't _want_ to go to Hell. But I swear to God, if that's what this has all been about, I'm going to beat your ass. Because if I'm going to Hell, I don't want to bring the world with me."

"It's not what it's all been about," Sam said. "But it's been in the back of my mind the whole time. I'm sorry, Dean. Maybe it's clouding my judgment. But it's all I can think about."

Dean rubbed his face a few times, refusing to meet Sam's eyes. "You think we can trust this thing?" he asked, and it sounded like he was actually asking.

Sam decided honesty was the best policy, and shrugged. "I don't _know_, Dean. I just, I still feel like if this is a long con, it's one I can't figure out. He seems genuine. And the way he treats Rose is...I mean, it's not like a demon to even pretend to care about a human that much."

Dean shook his head, sitting down on his bed. "I don't like it, Sammy. It stinks. And we haven't lived this long by trusting demons."

"So we don't trust him," Sam said, sitting next to his brother. "But you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If he wants to hang with us, let's let him. We can keep an eye on him that way, and figure out what he's planning."

Dean passed a hand over his eyes. "Okay."

"Okay?" Sam echoed.

"Okay. I'm gonna trust you, Sammy. Not _him_. You." He glanced at his younger brother. "You better not screw this up."

Sam laughed in relief. "No pressure," he said.

He was pretty sure that the Doctor was on their side.

He was pretty sure that he was making the right call.

He just _really_ hoped he wasn't wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

Author's Note: Enough talk, let's get to the action! Also I'm really excited because I just had an epiphany about this story, one of those moments where you as the author go "OH. That's why this happened." Always glad when I get those before I'm done with the story.

Allons-y!

* * *

They waited for two days without any sign of the Doctor. They scoured books, called sources, joined more UFO-sighter forums than any of them were willing to admit. Lots and lots of information about the Doctor on the UFO forums, but most of it sounded like hyperbole, even having met the man. (Well. The...whatever.) Nothing whatsoever about the Shadow Proclamation.

Dean leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes at the laptop screen in front of him. "Found her," he said. Sam looked up and walked over to his brother. "Rose Marion Tyler. She checks out. Born in '87 in London, parents Jackie and Pete Tyler. Pete died when she was a baby. Dropped out of school, worked at a department store, and hey—disappeared in 2005. Missing person case on her for a bit, but everything was dropped when she came back a few months later. Hasn't held a job since then." He shrugged, looking back at Sam. "Looks legit, man."

"Okay," Sam said slowly. "So she's human. And her story checks out. So maybe she is traveling with the Doctor willingly."

"So why isn't this totally normal human chick scared of the Doctor, when Dad was?" Dean asked.

Sam sighed and ran his hands through his hair, then caught himself. That wasn't his habit. He put his hands down. "We need to figure out exactly what it was that happened between Dad, Bill, and the Doctor," he said. "Ellen's not going to tell us. And while the Doctor told me some of the story, he didn't tell me what happened with Dad."

"Think you can get him to?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know, man. I can try. But I mean, you don't want to know, right?"

"Don't be a bitch," Dean muttered.

Sam thought about arguing, but decided against it. It wasn't like he didn't understand why Dean didn't want to know. And honestly, it was a little bit of a relief. "Okay. So what we need to do is find the Doctor."

"Know any good summoning spells for...whatever the hell he is?" Dean asked snidely. Sam scowled at him. "Or do we just wait for him to show up?"

"It's not like he's been really scarce," Sam replied. "I figure if we wait long enough, he'll show up by himself."

"Right. Great," Dean said. "So we get to just cool our heels here until he decides to show up."

"We're always complaining about not having any down time," Sam offered. "Maybe this is, you know, a blessing in disguise."

"Or a trap disguised as a blessing in disguise," Dean muttered, but put his hands up placatingly when Sam glared. "Okay, okay. We'll take a weekend at Bobby's and hope the Doc shows up."

But he didn't. And after the third day of doing nothing, Dean was too restless to continue to wait. "We gotta find ourselves a case or something, man, I'm going stir-crazy," he said as he paced the kitchen. "Bobby? Any news of the weird?"

Bobby grunted from behind a stack of papers and books, which Sam took as a _no_.

Dean groaned. "Look, there's gotta be something. There's always something. Every time we _want_ a day off there's freaking plagues of locusts in Santa Monica or cow mutilations in Duluth, and _now_ there's gonna be radio silence? Come on."

Bobby fixed him with an irritated glare. "Sorry, Dean, I can't just _stir up_ a little demonic activity when you idjits get _bored_. There's either signs or there ain't, and right now, there ain't. Why don't you two try to summon that Doctor character if you want trouble so bad?"

"Bobby, you know there aren't any summoning spells for the Doctor," Sam said, irritated. Of course, he knew _why_ there weren't any summoning spells now. But that wasn't something he could talk about. Naturally.

Bobby shrugged. "Then I guess you ladies could learn how to knit," he suggested darkly, opening a book in a pointed manner and burying his face in it.

Sam looked at his brother and shook his head, gesturing to the door. They were both headed for it when Dean jumped, digging in his pocket and taking out his cell phone. "H'lo?" he muttered, frowning.

Sam watched as his eyebrows shot up, and he motioned for Sam to come closer. "Ellen! What's the news?"

Dean took the phone away from his ear and hit the speaker button. "—tipped off on some demonic activity in Rock Rapids. Knew you boys were close, thought maybe you could take a look."

"Rock Rapids?" Sam echoed. "That's..._really_ close, Ellen. Like, weirdly close."

There was a pause at the other end of the line. "If you boys are too busy, Jo and I can check it out."

"No!" Dean said hurriedly. "No, no way, Ellen. We're right here. We'll get it. Any specifics?"

"Just the usual. I don't think there's more than a couple of 'em there, from reports. I don't think it should be a big problem, but it'll give you boys something to do other than hiding from the Doctor." A pause. "I assume you're still hiding from the Doctor."

"Haven't seen hide or hair," Dean lied smoothly. "Maybe he's given up on us."

Ellen snorted. "Yeah, that's likely. Either way you boys could probably use a distraction. This should be an easy enough case. Seems the center is an old hospital on the western side of town, name of St. Elizabeth. Might be where they're holing up."

"Thanks for the tip, Ellen," Dean said. "We'll call you if we need more info."

"You boys take care," Ellen said. "Keep out of the Doctor's way. If you see him nosin' around Rock Rapids you high-tail it out of there, you hear?"

"Yes ma'am," the brothers chorused. On the edge of Sam's vision he saw Bobby rolling his eyes at their show of agreeability.

Dean hung up the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and smiled. Sam thought for just a moment he saw something unsteady beneath that smile, but as soon as he noticed it it was gone. "Well," he said, "Rock Rapids. We can get there in no time."

"'Specially since all you've been doin' the last three days is packing and unpacking your damn bags," Bobby grumbled. "You're all set."

Sam followed Dean into the den where they'd dropped their bags, and said, "Does this...strike you as weird?"

"Does what?" Dean asked, rifling through his bag to make sure he had everything he needed.

"This...super generic demon activity right next door," Sam said. "I mean, you didn't press Ellen for specifics. At all."

"Ellen says there's demons, there's demons," Dean replied. "Easy as that."

"Yeah, but—" Sam broke off. It was pointless. Dean was too wound up, too eager for something to do, for anything to dissuade him. But something about it didn't sit right with him.

The drive was short and easy, nothing compared to the treks they usually took to get to the center of a case. But they pulled up to the town and instantly Sam's heart sank. He didn't know what it was about the place, but it did nothing to alleviate that sick anticipation that he'd had since Ellen's call.

"So Ellen said it's looking like pretty straightforward demonic possession," Dean was saying, digging through the trunk of the Impala. "But I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's not straightforward anything." An obvious attempt to placate Sam, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

"Probably not," Sam said distantly, scanning the silent street with wary eyes. It was early in the morning, but he felt like there should be more people out anyway. At the coffee shops, going to work at other, functional hospitals and diners, if nothing else. He grunted as Dean shoved a gun at him. "What?"

"You in there, space cadet?" Dean asked, and Sam barely suppressed a jump at his choice of words. Dean shook his head. "Get your head in the game, Sammy. We've got demons to gank."

"You don't think this feels..._weird_?" Sam asked, gesturing to the empty road.

"What, is it quiet, _too _quiet?" Dean mocked, pulling out the Colt. "Come on, Sammy, it's five in the morning, and we're headed to an abandoned hospital. There's not gonna be a lot of people hanging around."

"Seriously, Dean. I've got a weird feeling about this," Sam said, but Dean was already slamming the trunk shut and walking away. He sighed.

Sam kept a careful grip on the gun Dean had handed him as they walked down the road to the hospital, and a careful eye on their surroundings. He didn't know what it was that he was expecting...little green men? Coneheads? But if something was controlling the alien-demons, then that something was probably pretty powerful, and apparently after them. And Dean didn't know. Dean refused to know. So it was Sam's responsibility, for once, to protect his brother from something he didn't understand.

He looked ahead to Dean, who had his sharp eyes ahead of him and a casual hand on the Colt at his belt. Months were starting to turn into weeks as Sam counted down until Dean's year was up. And when he looked at him, all he saw was the brother who'd given up first his childhood to make sure Sam was safe, now his life and any chance he'd ever had of happiness.

It wasn't fair.

And now they were wasting time hunting down some demon instead of figuring out how to save Dean from Hell. The Doctor couldn't help him, so what good was this? What was the point of hunting at all?

They got to the doors of the hospital, and Dean drew the Colt out of his belt and prepped it. Sam did the same with his gun, and on Dean's cue, the brothers kicked in the doors together.

They rushed into the hallway, hearts racing, guns at the ready. But there was nothing. No sound except for the echo of their footsteps, their breathing. The brothers locked eyes for a moment, and Sam shrugged. Dean nodded to the end of the hallway, and Sam followed him down.

The hallway was lit only by the light that streamed in from the few broken windows and glass doors that lay at the ends of adjacent halls. Everything was grimy, off-white, which came across instantly as _creepy_ in an environment that was expected to be sterile. The doors were all closed tight, mold growing at the edges, sealing off the memories of whatever happened here in the past. Probably nothing good, if this was where the demons had decided to set up their HQ.

He pulled the EMF reader out of his pocket and scanned the hallway. He caught his brother's eyes, and gestured to the left. Dean nodded, and they headed in the direction of the readings. The needle began to spike as they neared a pair of double doors at the end of the hall, possibly leading to an OR. They stopped in front of it.

"This feels like a trap," Sam whispered.

Dean looked at him, and Sam saw the confusion in his brother's eyes. "We've got the Colt," Dean whispered back. "It's fine, Sammy. We'll gank the demon and go back to looking for the Doctor. Let's just get it over with."

Sam swallowed his anxiety and nodded. Dean watched him for a moment, then signaled a countdown on his fingers. On _one_, they burst through the doors together.

Past the barrel of his gun Sam saw a single figure standing in the middle of the room.

Sally.

In her uniform from Leo's, she stood there, a small smile playing on her lips. Her hair was tangled and matted, her lower lip split and bleeding. Her eyes went wide as the brothers stared at her, and her smile grew. She opened her mouth. Wider. Wider.

_"...Sam..."_

All Dean could hear was static, Sam knew. But to him, it was words. Extremely clear, the static only vague background noise. Whatever the TARDIS was doing to him, it was getting stronger. He put the gun down on the floor, to Dean's obvious horror, and held his hands out placatingly. "Tell me what you want," he said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean staring at him, his gun still very much pointed at Sally. "What you need. We can find the Doctor. We can help you."

The ghastly smile grew even wider. _"Sam Winchester. So trusting. Despite all. The Doctor is not your friend. You should hate him above all."_

Sam felt a chill at her words, but plowed forward nonetheless. "Maybe, but he can help _you_. He can get you home."

_"We do not want home. We want Earth,"_ the thing inside Sally said. _"The Doctor thinks Earth is his. It is not. We will take what we desire. Starting with you."_

Sam felt a pulling sensation at his solar plexus, and with a cry he was flung across the room. The Sally-creature caught him with a single arm, and pulled a wicked-looking knife out of her apron. Holding Sam immobile, she pressed the knife against his throat. "Sam!" Dean shouted, aiming the Colt at Sally's heart.

"Don't shoot her!" Sam shouted back. He felt the knife pressed harder against his throat. "Dean, it's what they want! Don't shoot her!"

"This looks pretty damned justifiable to me, Sammy," Dean growled, not putting the gun down.

He heard a gravelly laugh, and looked down at Sally's body. _"He will shoot,"_ she said, _"because you think him too weak to tell him the truth."_

Sam stared at her. "What?"

_"What the Doctor told you about our origins. Not only humans can be possessed, and the human mind is so spacious,"_ she said sweetly. _"Room for two passengers, at least."_

Sam's eyes widened in a rush of understanding.

Sally's arm pushed the knife up under Sam's chin, and a thin stream of blood ran down his throat.

Time seemed to slow down.

Sam saw in excruciating detail as the doors behind Dean began to open. The hem of a tan trenchcoat appeared in the doorway as Dean's fingers curled to pull the trigger. He heard the Doctor's cry of _no_, a fraction of a second before he heard the report of the Colt. He felt the bullet hit Sally's chest, felt her body convulse with the power of the Colt, saw Dean look over his shoulder, and saw the Doctor push Dean out of the way all at the same moment. He fell as Sally's grip loosened, as she crumpled to the floor.

He saw as the black smoke poured out from her throat in the moments before her death.

Before _their_ death? Sally's and the alien's, both. Somehow the demon had forced the alien back inside Sally, and possessed them both. A trap. The perfect trap for Dean.

His perception returned to normal as the Doctor crashed down to his knees by Sally's still form. "No, no, no, _no,_" the alien growled, scanning Sally with his sonic screwdriver. He touched the wound on her chest, directly in the middle of her heart, and shook his head. "_No!_"

Dean ran up behind Sam, crouching by him. "Sammy, are you okay?" he asked, but Sam noticed that his eyes were on the Doctor. Noticed the slight tremor in his brother's hands, the way he swallowed hard. Sam nodded silently.

"I'm so sorry," the Doctor said, and Sam wasn't sure who he was talking to. He closed Sally's eyes gently, and buried his face in his hands.

"She w—she was gonna kill Sam," Dean said softly.

Sam braced himself for the Doctor's anger. Maybe this was the last straw. Maybe they were about to see why he was called the Oncoming Storm. But when he looked up, all Sam saw in his face was grief. "I know," he whispered. "I know. And believe me. I am so, so sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Sam asked.

As if in answer, the doors flung open again, and Rose ran into the room, her eyes wide with panic. "Doctor, they're here!" she cried. "They're outside!"

The Doctor stood, and looked down at the Winchesters with an unreadable expression. "There's no running," he said. "It'll only be worse if you try to run. Come with me, and do _exactly_ as I say. If you do that, maybe I can get you out of this alive."

"Who's here?" Dean asked, as he helped Sam to his feet. Sam tried to see outside the windows, but couldn't.

The Doctor's expression was grim, his face pale, as he replied, "The Judoon. The hired guns of the Shadow Proclamation. They're here to see that you're brought up for trial."

Dean looked to Sam for explanation, and Sam shook his head helplessly. "Dean, I wanted to explain, but you didn't...I couldn't..."

"Well I, for one, wish you had," the Doctor said tightly. "This is going to be a much, _much_ worse way to learn the truth."

Dean opened his mouth to ask another question, but at that moment a squadron of giant humanoid creatures in armor burst through the doors. They marched in perfect formation, heavy boots shaking the ground under them. Upon stopping, all but the leader in front hefted massive guns pointed at the Winchesters, the Doctor, and Rose. The leader took off his helmet, revealing a giant, rhinoceros-like head. Dean straightened in shock beside Sam.

"_Bo ho lo gro_," the leader roared. "_Modro so ho lo cro._"

The Doctor drew himself up and stepped in front of the Winchesters. "_Mo ho vo pro dro,_" he replied. Sam looked at Rose to see if she was getting any of it; she looked as confused as he did. For some reason, the TARDIS wasn't translating the Judoon language for any of them. "_Fo loto wo ro yo to._"

The lead Judoon hesitated for a moment, then nodded at whatever it was the Doctor had said. "_Dro ko_," it said.

The Doctor looked grimly satisfied. "_Mo ho_." He turned back to the Winchesters. "We have to go with them, _now_. Whatever thoughts you're having of some big American cowboy escape, and don't think I can't read them on your faces, put them away. You can't outrun them. You can't escape them. Count yourselves lucky: I've convinced them to let me come along as your counsel, since you're inhabitants of a Class 5 planet and thus not privy to the intricacies of the legislation or the workings of court."

"What does that mean?" Sam asked, feeling panic begin to rise in his throat. "Doctor, I don't understand. Counsel? Court? Where are we going?"

The Doctor's severe demeanor faded for a moment, and in that faltering, Sam saw depths of grief and guilt that he knew he could never understand. Rose took a step towards the Doctor, but pulled away at the last moment before touching his arm. "Samuel," the Doctor began, then broke off. He shook his head. "There isn't time. You'll just have to trust me. I wish I could explain everything but I _can't_, not now. It's too late."

"Just...tell us where we're going," Sam said again.

The Doctor glared at the ground as though it had wronged him, and then looked up at Sam. He almost took a step back. He'd seen those eyes on the Doctor before...back on the TARDIS, when he talked about the Time War. Haunted, ancient, and above all, sad. "We're going to the Shadow Proclamation," the Doctor said softly, "where the two of you are to be tried for crimes against galactic peace."

Sam felt his brother jump next to him, and stifled a groan. Of all the ways for Dean to have to learn about this, _this_ was the worst. He should have told him. He should have trusted his brother to understand, and trusted his own judgment that this was important enough to disobey his father's wishes. "Galactic?" Dean echoed. "Like, as in, the galaxy? As in _outer space_?"

"Dean, I wish I could give you the kinder, gentler tour, like I gave your brother, but there's no way to say this that is easy and sufficiently fast," the Doctor said quickly. "I'm not a demon, not a monster, not a god, nothing you've known before. I'm a Time Lord, an alien. I know you don't believe me but it doesn't matter right now, you have to listen to me."

"_Ro ko ho tro,_" the Judoon said in tones that Sam interpreted, perhaps projecting, as impatient.

"_Tro fo ho kro,_" the Doctor cried, and continued: "We're being taken to an intergalactic court. Some of the demons you've hunted in the past weren't demons at all but peaceful aliens and so the Shadow Proclamation has had its eye on you since you were children. Those aliens, in Sally and in Robert, were refugees. You couldn't have known that, I know, and I tried to get here in time but I couldn't. Something was interfering with my instruments. But it doesn't matter now because it's too late, you've killed her, and now we have to try to fix this. So whatever you want to think of me, fine. Insane, a liar, or truthful, whatever you want. But you have to _listen_ to me and do as I say if you want to survive this. Are we clear? Can you do that?"

Maybe it was the Doctor's brisk, clipped tone, perhaps the authoritative manner in which he spoke, maybe the sheer, naked desperation behind his voice. Whatever it was, Dean nodded. "Okay," he said. "I don't know why, but okay."

The Doctor took a breath to argue, then processed what Dean had said. He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, brilliant," he said weakly. He turned back around to the Judoon, and said over his shoulder, "Stay calm. Stay close. Stay quiet. Look penitent." He glanced at Sam, then at Dean, and sighed. "Well, however penitent you can manage."

"Doctor—" Rose began, but he held up a hand. She glared at him.

"You're not coming," the Doctor said firmly. "Absolutely not."

She folded her arms. "There's no way I'm sitting in the TARDIS while the three of you are in danger," she snapped. "Doctor, you know better than that."

The Doctor looked at her, and there was a bit of a staring contest before the Doctor gave in. It occurred to Sam briefly that, under other circumstances, it would have been funny to see a creature with the lore of the Doctor bested in a contest of wills by a twenty-something girl from south London, but there was a little too much going on to really find the humor just now. "Just—try not to run off," he said without much hope.

The Time Lord negotiated with the Judoon for another minute, and Dean turned to Sam. "So aliens," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

"Yeah," Sam said miserably. "Look, Dean, I'm sorry, I—"

"I don't get it," Dean interrupted. "Is that what Dad didn't want us to know? Why?"

"It's part of it," Sam said, "not the whole thing. Dean, I'm sorry, I am, we just, we don't have time."

Dean just looked at him for a minute, his expression indecipherable. "Yeah," he said, finally. "Okay."

The Doctor turned back to the three humans and said, "They'll let me take you there in the TARDIS. Don't think this is a clever escape plan because it's not, but I'm working on one, so don't worry, it'll come to me any minute now. But the TARDIS will be a better ride than however they were planning to bring you up, so let's all be thankful to the nice Judoon, and don't give them nasty looks as we pass, Winchesters." He looked at Rose. "Well, and Tyler, come to think of it."

"Oi!" Rose protested. "I'm tactful."

The Doctor snorted and led them out of the OR without another word. Sam glanced nervously at the Judoon as they passed, but none of the aliens made any attempt to stop them.

The TARDIS was parked just outside of the hospital, and Dean faltered a step when he saw it. "I'm supposed to get in that?" he muttered, and Sam nodded, grimacing and gripping his brother's shoulder. Planes were bad enough, but Dean was going to _hate_ the TARDIS.

The Doctor drew a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, perhaps a little reluctantly. He walked in first, and Rose waited until the brothers were inside to step in and close the door behind all of them.

Sam stood next to Dean as he took in the inside of the TARDIS. The older Winchester's eyes flicked over the room, the console, the columns, wide and bright. Sam could see thousands of questions welling up inside of his brother, but all that came out was, "Well, shit."

The Doctor's expression was a shifting combination of disappointment and amusement, both of which were overlays above the tight concern that predominated them. "Bigger on the inside. Yes. I'll give you the whole tour when we're all out of the woods, but until then, we have to get to the Shadow Proclamation _now_ and that means insanely precise calculations. Quickly, tell me if I'm wrong: you don't like flying, do you, Dean."

Dean looked surprised, but shook his head. "God meant for us to fly, he'd've given us wings," he said grimly.

That earned a twitch of the Doctor's lips. "Rose, take them to the Zero Room. Stay there, the three of you, until I come to get you once we've landed. And please, Rose, don't argue."

She'd been about to, Sam knew. But something in the Doctor's face convinced her otherwise. "Right," she said, her eyes not leaving the Doctor. "Follow me."

They did, and she led them down labyrinthine halls, twisting and turning until she came across an unmarked door that was identical to all the other doors, at least to Sam's eyes. She put her hand against the wall, and the door opened with a satisfyingly sci-fi _shick_ noise. Dean looked wary, but he followed Sam and Rose in.

The door closed behind them, and Rose sat down on the floor. Sam looked around at the totally empty room, its walls sort of pinkish-gray with large, softly-lit circles in them. The whole thing smelled faintly of roses. "What is this place?" Sam asked.

"The Zero Room," she replied, sounding tired. "It'll cancel out any interference. We won't be able to feel the TARDIS pitching as he flies her."

"Thank God," Dean said fervently, sitting next to Rose. He put his face in his hands. "Last thing I need is airsickness."

Sam sat down, too, and stared at the blank wall. This was more waiting than they usually had to do, especially when it didn't involve one of them driving. The idea that their fate was in the Doctor's hands was not a comforting one, as capable as he'd proven himself. But it was like Dean had said back in the woods. They'd never come across any non-human who had their best interests at heart yet; it was a little naive to assume that the Doctor would.

He felt a cool hand on his, and looked up to see Rose reaching over Dean to him. Dean looked up, too. "He's gonna save you," she said. "The Shadow Proclamation, they'll listen to him. They know him. I've seen him get friends out of tighter squeezes than this."

"Friends," Dean laughed dryly. "Yeah."

Rose shrugged, looking a little put out. "Whatever you think of him, he considers you...well, if not friends, since you're not overly fond of him, at least...his _responsibility_. He feels like it's his fault that you're in this mess, because of that deal he made with your dad. And the Doctor's never more dangerous than when he feels guilty. He's gonna fix this."

"I hope so," Sam breathed.

The void of the Zero Room made the silence louder, the stillness deeper, and the waiting even harder.


	10. Chapter 10

Author's Note: Guys. Why can't I hold all these feels. You have no idea how much fun I had reading all of your reviews. And you have no idea how much fun it was to read all of your reviews _and then upload this chapter._

...Mine is an evil laugh.

* * *

The trip was utterly silent and still, so much so that Sam couldn't tell if they were moving or not. It was unnerving, but it was better than watching his brother turn green as they pitched and rolled through time and space. Time and space. It was a little surprising to Sam how easily that thought came to him. But he supposed he was pretty primed for accepting weird stuff.

He didn't know how long they'd been there, but he couldn't pretend that he didn't need the breather. There was something calming about this room, too. The rose scent, the flavor of the air filled his lungs and relaxed him. He wondered what the purpose of this room was when the Doctor didn't have visitors prone to getting airsick, which he assumed was probably most of the time. Meditation? Did the Doctor do yoga? Something about that image struck Sam as funny, and he let a smile spread across his face.

But it died quickly when he remembered where they were headed. Even with the Doctor as their "counsel", they were in deep trouble. Dean had killed a refugee alien. Sure, it was to save his brother and sure, the alien was possessed by a demon, but he didn't know if that would be reason enough for the members of the Shadow Proclamation to give them any reprieve. And if the Doctor couldn't convince them, he didn't know what the penalties were for breaking intergalactic law, but he couldn't imagine they were pleasant.

(There was a tiny, tiny part of him, though, that wondered if being sentenced by the Shadow Proclamation would override Dean's deal. If it would, then space prison would be worth it. Hell, if it would, then he'd ask the Doctor to put in a guilty plea for them.)

Sam raised his eyes as Dean stood up and walked into the middle of the room. His hands were in his pockets and he looked around, taking in all of the monotony. Sam couldn't tell if he was mad at him; he hadn't said much since they got into the Zero Room. Hadn't looked at anyone, just sat by the wall, lost in thought. And Dean usually thought out loud, so that was unusual. But now he took a deep breath, shaking his head. "So we're in space," he said plainly.

"Yep," Rose replied. She sounded like she was too weary to sugar-coat anything. She picked aimlessly at the cuffs of her pink jacket, balling up little pieces of fluff and tossing them onto the floor of the Zero Room.

"_Outer_ space," Dean said, as though to clarify.

"Yep."

"That's pretty weird."

Rose's lips tweaked into a bit of a grin. "Yep."

"So the Doctor's an alien."

Rose nodded. "Time Lord. From Gallifrey. Don't ask him about his planet or his people, and don't tell him he looks human, he'll only say _you_ look Time Lord. He's a bit tetchy about that."

Dean took a moment to process that, then shook his head. "But why's he _here_? I mean, not here on his ship. Earth."

Rose took a deep breath and shrugged. "'S like I told you before. It's his favorite planet. He's fascinated with us. Thinks we're pretty marvelous for some reason."

Dean nodded, but Sam could see his jaw getting tense. "Okay," he said. "Then why didn't my dad trust him, if he's such a fan of humans?"

Rose sharpened a bit at that. "Not everybody _likes_ the Doctor," she replied, a little defensively. "But he's on our side, I can tell you that. I don't know what happened with your dad." She faltered, and bit her lip. "But maybe...sometimes, it's hard, with the Doctor. You think he can do things, for you, but he can't, or he won't. And it's...hard to accept." She lowered her eyes. "Like I thought he could bring back _my_ dad. But he couldn't. Well, he _could_, that's the thing. But it would have led to a paradox, and he can't let that happen. Maybe your dad thought he should have been able to do something he wasn't willing to."

Sam caught Dean's eyes, and knew that his brother was thinking the same thing he was. Maybe their dad had met this time-traveling alien and thought he could save their mom, stop the whole thing from happening, make it so that he could've raised his sons with his wife outside of Hunting, outside of demons and monsters and salting hotel rooms. Maybe he'd asked and the Doctor had refused. It was a grimly comforting thought—that that was all there'd been to it. That he'd written what he'd written in his journal in anger.

Comforting, but Sam wasn't sure it was likely. It was too simple to be true.

(He'd have to think of an opposite of Occam's Razor to apply to life as a Winchester.)

Rose looked around, frowning. She pushed up the sleeve of her jacket and glanced down at her watch. Dean noticed, and snorted. She looked up. "Is that, you know, a lot of good, traveling with him?" Dean asked.

Rose looked confused, and then smiled, looking like she was surprised that she had done so. "Well, there's _subjective_ time in your own timeline versus _objective_ time in your traveling," she said. "Objective like, we might have to take a detour in the year 3270 before we get to the Shadow Proclamation. But subjective, like, how long has it been for us since the Doctor locked us in here? Answer is, thirty minutes. He doesn't usually take this long to get us somewhere, not unless the TARDIS is acting up. But I don't think she would, not now."

"She?" Dean echoed, and Rose nodded. He looked mildly impressed. "Man after my own heart. Maybe I misjudged the guy."

"But point is, it's weird that we're still in here," she said, standing up and walking to the door. She folded her arms. "He should've been here to get us by now."

"Think something went wrong?" Sam asked.

Rose opened her mouth to reply, turning back to him, and the doors opened behind her. Her shoulders slumped and she rolled her eyes. "Such dramatic timing," she began, but as she turned and saw the expression on the Doctor's face, she stopped. "Doctor? What is it?"

He shook his head. Sam stared at him. He'd shed his trench coat and his suit coat, and looked totally disheveled. Even a little sweaty. His face was pale and his dark eyes serious under his glasses, which were sitting askew on his nose. "Something's gone wrong," he said. "And I don't know what so don't ask. But the TARDIS' navigation instruments were highjacked by the Judoon ship. We're not at the Shadow Proclamation, I know that for sure."

"Then where are we?" Sam asked slowly.

The Doctor shook his head, pulling his hands through his hair and pacing in the Zero Room. "I don't know. Not for sure. It doesn't make any sense. Why would the Judoon take us anywhere but the Shadow Proclamation? They're totally loyal. _Mindlessly_ loyal. That's why they're the perfect hired guns. They wouldn't have the imagination to betray the Shadow Proclamation, even if they had the motivation, and I couldn't imagine what could motivate them."

"What's on the screens?" Rose asked.

The Doctor threw his arms in the air in frustration. "Nothing. Black. All black, at every angle. I can't see a _thing_. Whatever they did to override the destination protocol is interfering with surveillance instruments as well." He stopped in the middle of the room, closing his eyes and rubbing the back of his neck. He was still for a moment, and seemed to take strength from the room. He inhaled the rose-scented air deeply, and nodded, opening his eyes. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. "All right. Let's figure this out."

He strode purposefully out of the room, and Rose and the Winchesters followed him. Sam stopped short about five yards out of the room, when, after turning one corner, they were back at the control room.

"How—" he began, but the Doctor was already saying, "She puts rooms where they need to be." Sam nodded. He didn't understand, but he nodded.

As the Doctor stood at the console, flipping switches and banging on screens in an attempt to fix them the same way Dean always fixed TVs, Rose walked up to the doors. "Why don't we just step outside and see where we are?" she asked. "That's what we usually do."

"Don't touch the doors," the Doctor called, sounding distracted. He stopped, and looked over to her, adjusting his glasses. "I've got a bad feeling about all of this," he said. "Don't go out, not yet."

Rose backed away from the doors, hugged her arms around her body and walked back up to Sam and Dean. The Doctor took out his screwdriver and aimed it at one of the screens, but before he could hit the button, the screen clicked on.

Everyone jumped, even the Doctor, just a little, as a smiling man's face filled the screen. Middle-aged, Caucasian, with thin brown hair and absolutely ice-cold brown eyes. He wore a crisp, expensive-looking black suit. He gave a little wave. "Hello, Doctor," the man said. He, too, spoke with a British accent.

The Doctor's face was totally blank, his eyes fixed on the screen. There was a weariness in those eyes, a resignation, and Sam knew that the pieces had all fallen into place in the Time Lord's head. "Crowley," he said, his voice dull.

"Long time no see," Crowley said with a smirk.

"Not long enough," the Doctor replied. "So it was you paying the Judoon. Clever to have them pretend to be with the Shadow Proclamation. How did you manage to send out the Shadow Proclamation wanted call, though? It was _extremely_ convincing."

Crowley shrugged carelessly. "Oh, Doctor. You underestimate us. The call was genuine. Humans aren't the only creatures that can be possessed, you know that. One of my men hitched a ride on a convict, then on a justice."

Sam and Dean looked at each other, startled. Possessed. This was a demon? "Doctor, where are we? Who is that?" Dean demanded, but Sam could hear the tremor under his rough tone.

The Doctor looked over, and so did Crowley on the screen. "Ah, Dean Winchester," Crowley laughed. "How perfect. Sort of a poetry to it. It's always the humans that give you problems, isn't it, Doctor? As for who I am...we'll get acquainted later. But as for where." Crowley's eyes didn't flip black, but they took on an unholy glee as he said, "You're in _Hell_, boy. A couple months early."

Dean staggered back, and Sam caught him. The Doctor returned his eyes to the screen. "He's telling the truth," the Time Lord said to the brothers. "But it's not for the reason you think. Stay calm."

The Doctor looked at the screen like one would look at a snake about to strike. "You already have a contract on Dean. Samuel is your collateral. Rose isn't your concern, so this is a trap for me, or am I mistaken?"

Crowley smiled. "As usual, not at all," he said. "I'm tired of you interfering in my affairs, Doctor. We all are. Converting one of my crossroads girls was the last straw."

"She made her choice," the Doctor replied, but there was no fight in his voice. "You knew about my meeting John Winchester, you knew I'd be concerned that the eye of the Shadow Proclamation was still on his sons, so you used that to bring me here. The Winchesters were never in danger—not more than usual, at least. It was all a trap."

Crowley began to clap slowly. "Clever boy. _But_ I wouldn't say the Winchesters weren't in danger...the call sent out from the Shadow Proclamation did come from a justice. They are wanted. Lucky you found them before someone else did, eh?"

"And my TARDIS," the Doctor continued, ignoring the threat. "She'll be disabled until you have me, effectively trapping my Companions here unless I surrender."

"Naturally."

The Doctor ran a hand along the TARDIS' console, lovingly. "And if I go with you, you'll let them go?" he asked.

"Doctor, no!" Rose cried, but the Doctor ignored her.

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Well, sure. But you're the only one who can pilot your ship."

"Yes, I am," the Doctor said. "So it won't hurt you to release her. I'll come with you, _willingly_, if you agree to release her and let my Companions go _without_ following them."

Crowley drew back just a bit, looked hesitant. "Are you making a deal with me, Doctor?" he asked.

"Only way I can trust your word," the Doctor said, some heat behind his voice. "You know me, Crowley. You know how clever I am. If you don't take this then you don't know what will happen."

Crowley frowned, but nodded. "Can't exactly seal it," he said, amused. "But it's a deal, Doctor. See you out here."

The Doctor held out his screwdriver and turned off the monitor. He turned towards the Winchesters and took a breath to speak when Rose walked up to him, stood in front of him for a moment, and slapped him full across the face.

He staggered back a step, raising a hand to the offended cheek, and caught himself on the console with the other. "Suppose I deserved that," he murmured.

"You _bastard_!" Rose cried, and rushed at him. He grabbed her by the wrists, held her for a moment, until she collapsed into him, weeping. He wrapped his arms around her. "You can't leave me, not like this," she murmured.

"You have to trust me," the Doctor said into her hair. "Now more than ever. I'm clever. Remember that I'm clever."

"Doctor, if you don't come back to me I'll kill you," Rose said, halfway between laughing and crying.

"I'll let you," the Doctor said. He pulled away from her gently, and looked at Sam. "Samuel. Come see."

Sam shared a glance with Dean, but did as he was told. He stopped right in front of the Doctor, looking down at the Time Lord. The Doctor met his eyes intensely. "I hope I'm not wrong about this," he said quietly. "Samuel, I need your permission to give you something."

"Give me something?" he asked warily.

The Doctor nodded. "Knowledge. I need to give you knowledge. Unless I've made a terrible mistake, you can get Dean and Rose out of here. I have a job for you to do. But I can't explain it, I don't have time, I just have to _give_ it to you."

Sam hesitated. He didn't like it. Some of their reading said that the Doctor had powerful psychic abilities, but he'd had enough people messing with his head for one lifetime. He didn't want any more. But the pleading look on the Doctor's face, and the lack of other options, didn't leave him a lot of choice in the matter. "Sure," he said. "Just...make it fast."

"Faster than you'd imagine," the Doctor said wryly, placing his fingertips gingerly on Sam's temples. He closed his eyes, squared his shoulders. "Here we go."

The sensation was unlike anything Sam had ever felt before. His head felt _full_; it was like the inverse of when he had his visions. Suddenly all this energy filled his head, this other presence, quick and delicate and clever. He felt himself shudder, as though from a distance, while he felt the Doctor searching for the right place to..._give him_ the knowledge, whatever it was that he was getting. He felt that cool, sharp presence hover over a part of his mind. He felt a little shock, and realized that it was just that, shock—the Doctor's shock. Something had surprised him.

And then he felt _it_.

He gasped out loud, and heard Dean shout his name, Rose shout for Dean to stop. But he only noticed vaguely, as through a fog. Because his head was _full_. Full of such bright, beautiful things.

The TARDIS. She sang to him now. He understood those loving caresses that the Doctor gave her, the reverence with which Rose spoke of her. He could feel the years of her, the experience of her, the intricacy and delicacy and beauty of her, the all-encompassing feeling of _love_ that she wrapped the Doctor and Rose with, tendrils of it wrapping around Sam and his brother already. He could feel the warmth and unfathomable power of her heart. The knobs and levers and hammers and horns all made a chaotic kind of sense to him now. He saw the flow of it, the organic logic of it. Of her. Of all of her.

The plan. He understood what he needed to do, what he needed to say, where he needed to bring them, how he could coax the TARDIS into carrying them safely there and back once the job had been done. It blossomed in pictures in his head: the people he needed to talk to and the words he had to say to them, translated by the TARDIS. The etiquette that would keep them safe. The favors he could call on, the debts to the Doctor he could cash in.

And when the Doctor withdrew his fingers from Sam's brow, he saw the Doctor for the first time. How had he ever thought that this creature seemed in any way human? He _shone_. He was ancient and he shone. "What did you do to me?" Sam asked, breathless.

"What did you do to him?" Dean demanded hoarsely at almost exactly the same moment.

The Doctor only looked at Sam. "I wish I hadn't had to," he replied, his voice heavy with regret, "but it's the only way to get you out of this. When you're done, I'll take it back."

"No," Sam said instantly. "No, Doctor, I make sense. For the first time..._ever_."

The look in the Doctor's eyes chilled Sam. It was horror and grief and pity. "I was afraid of that," he said softly. The look disappeared and was replaced with a business-like manic focus. He pulled his suit coat off of the rail and shrugged it on. "So! I go out, get myself captured, brilliant plan step one. _You_, Sam, follow the directions I gave you, and take this key and _don't lose it_." He pressed a small Yale key strung on a thin length of twine, like the one Rose showed them in the woods, into Sam's palm. "Rose and Dean, listen to Sam, he knows what he's doing."

He picked up his overcoat from the floor, and pulled it on slowly as the energy seemed to visibly drain from him. He looked down and took a deep breath. "And I'm sorry," he said, his voice barely audible. "This was my fault. I brought the three of you into this, and I can't get you out of it." He looked up and met Dean's eyes. "I suppose you were right after all, Dean. I was nothing but trouble for you and your family."

Sam watched his brother, waiting for his response. Dean was still and quiet for a long moment, much longer than he usually waited before firing off a witty one-liner. When he finally spoke, it was quiet. "You stuck your neck out for us," he said. "You're about to throw yourself to the wolves out there, so my brother and Rose and I can make an escape. You made a deal with the devil to save three humans, and two of us are strangers." He shrugged and swallowed hard. "Frankly, Doc, even if you got us into this mess, you're pulling us out of it a lot better and braver than almost anybody else we know would have. So I guess you're all right in my book."

That took the Doctor by surprise, and there was an odd light in his eyes...if he were human, Sam would have thought he was touched by Dean's words. He nodded and took a breath. Then his face brightened. "Well! Right then," he said. "Allons-y and all. I'm off to bother some demons, you're off to adventure in the stars for a bit, and we'll all meet up later." He ran lightly down the ramp, and stopped when he got to the end. He looked up at Rose, and she walked slowly down to him. He took her by the wrist and pulled her towards him, and then framed her face in his hands. "I won't let them take me from you," he promised. "Trust me, Rose Tyler?"

She nodded. Sam couldn't see her face, but he could see her shoulders as they shook. "Always," she said.

The Doctor released her, and she took a few steps back. He winked at her, then waved to the Winchesters, and flung open the door. "Hello, boys!" he cried, and swung himself outside, slamming the door behind him.

The scent of sulfur filled the TARDIS.

Sam stood at the console, and felt Rose's and Dean's eyes on him. He put his hands gently over the controls, let them hover, let them feel the energy that was contained by such a thin veil of electronics. The heart of the TARDIS.

"Sam? What did he do to you?" Dean asked, but he sounded hesitant, like he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Sam just breathed for a moment, feeling his pulse synch itself with the pulsating of the TARDIS. His blood reacted to her. He felt more alive, more _right_, than he ever had before. He wondered if that was okay. If that was what the Doctor had done, or if there was something else at work.

"Sammy?"

Sam turned around, shaken out of his reverie, and the smallest bit annoyed about it. "I can pilot her," he said. Rose's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "Not easily. But he...taught me how to. Enough to get us where we need to go."

"Sam, the _Doctor_ can barely pilot the TARDIS by himself," Rose said tentatively. "It's supposed to take half a dozen Time Lords to pilot a TARDIS. Half the time we end up in the wrong century or the wrong galaxy. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be pessimistic, but...how are you supposed to pilot her by yourself?"

Sam shook his head, but he realized he was unfazed by her doubt. She didn't have to believe him. He _knew_ he could do this. "He put it in my head," he said. "How to take us there. And she'll help me. She knows it's important."

He looked back and saw the worry in his brother's eyes, but he saw something else, too. Pride, and trust. "All right, Sammy," Dean said. "Take us where we're going."

Sam smiled, feeling more warmed by his brother's confidence than by the heart of the TARDIS, when Rose cleared her throat. "Not to interrupt this lovely brother moment," she said, "but where exactly _are_ we going, if you don't mind my asking?"

Sam walked around to one of the screens, tilted it, and began inputting coordinates. "We're headed where we were supposed to be going anyway," he said. "Dean, this is probably going to be an even rockier ride than last time, so you might want to get back to the Zero Room."

"No way," Dean said firmly. "I'm not leavin' you."

"All right," Sam said, in a _suit yourself_ tone of voice.

"Sam—" Rose said, but broke off as Sam finished hitting the buttons and pulled down a lever, and shouted "Hang on!"

As the TARDIS began to rock, he said, "Everybody hold on tight. We're going to the Shadow Proclamation."


	11. Chapter 11

The TARDIS was amazing.

When Sam flipped switches and hit buttons and pulled levers and even banged on a little gong, it was all from the knowledge the Doctor had given him; once he started, it was automatic. Which was lucky, because this stuff had to be done _way_ too fast for him to have thought about it. He understood why it usually took six people to pilot something like this.

But once he'd set the coordinates, the TARDIS took over. He pulled the final lever, shouting for Rose and Dean to hold on, and he knew that she had it from there. He gripped the edge of the console, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Dean, who looked grim as he hung tight to the railing but otherwise was holding it together pretty well.

The TARDIS stilled after a while, and Sam ran to the screens to see where they were. He held his breath as the screens flickered for a moment, then came on. He released it in a rush as he saw that their location's coordinates matched the ones the Doctor had put in his mind. They were there. They'd made it.

He put a hand on the console, felt the pulsating of the heart of the TARDIS, and whispered, "Thank you."

Dean stood up unsteadily, bracing himself against the rail and using it to guide him to the console. "So did we make it?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly. Sam knew that his brother was nauseated, and did everything in his power to keep the little grin off of his face. It almost worked. It didn't escape Dean's notice, and he scowled. "Yeah, laugh it up, Fuzzball."

"We made it," Sam replied. "We're at the Shadow Proclamation. Nobody can get into the TARDIS without a key, right, Rose?"

"Right," she said, and Sam noticed how pale she was. She was keeping it together, though, which he was grateful for. He'd need her.

"Good. Because we need to get on the same page." He took a breath to steady himself, and to calm the thousand swirling thoughts in his mind. He had to work to focus them on the few he needed to convey to Rose and Dean. He wondered for a moment if this was what it was like to be the Doctor—always having to go slower than his mind tried to take him.

"Hey Sammy." Sam looked up at Dean, who was less green than before. "Before we start the pow-wow. Wanna tell me what happened?"

Sam was surprised to realize that he did. He really did. He wanted to tell Dean _everything_. The way the Doctor looked, the way the TARDIS sang, the way he could feel his hands flying over the console like he was born in front of one. But like usual, they didn't have time. "I can't explain it, Dean," he said, and he heard the wondering tone in his own voice, "but the Doctor...dropped some knowledge in my brain. Wholesale. Suddenly I knew how to fly the TARDIS and I know what we need to do to get everybody out of this thing alive. Everybody," he repeated, looking at Rose pointedly. She nodded, shoving a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear in an almost violent manner.

When he turned back to Dean, his brother was watching him with a look precisely halfway between awe and anxiety. "And you're okay?" was the only thing he said.

Sam nodded, smiling. "I'm fine, Dean. I'm better than okay. Whatever he did...it was _right_. But we can talk about it more later. Right now, we need to get this plan straight. First things first: we're at the Shadow Proclamation, and as much as this is our only choice, we are not safe here. That Crowley guy said that one of his demons possessed a justice here, and that the wanted call that was sent out for you and me, Dean, was real. So we're actually, really wanted by the court. The Doctor believes that whatever demon possessed the justice is still here in that justice, making sure that everything goes according to their plan."

"And if it's not?" Dean asked.

Sam hesitated. "Then we improvise. But he was pretty sure about that. Okay. So he's got a couple of people he knows in the Shadow Proclamation who owe him favors. We need to find one of them, the Doctor said that the Shadow Architect would be the best choice, and explain what's going on."

"Woah, hold on." Dean held up his hands, staring at Sam like he'd grown a second head. "We're just supposed to go up to some alien and _explain_ that one of his co-workers has been possessed by a demon? He's just gonna buy that?"

"She," Sam corrected, "and...yeah." He shared a glance with Rose, who looked very sympathetic.

Dean noticed. "What? What was that look?" He looked at Rose, then at Sam. "_What_?"

Sam lowered his eyes. "Dean, this is...what the Doctor told Dad he'd never tell us." He saw Dean brace himself, and shut his eyes as he said, "It's demons, Dean. They're not...it's not what we thought. They're aliens. All of them. Werewolves, ghosts, demons, wraiths...they can all be explained. It's not some spiritual thing. Demons came from a planet that was destroyed in a war the Doctor fought in, shacked up on Earth and wormed their way into all of our cultures' lore." He looked up at his brother, who had paled. "Dad didn't want us to know because...I mean, demons, that's clear-cut, you know? But if they're another species..." He faltered, and added softly, "Shades of gray."

Dean took a deep, unsteady breath, and ran a hand over his face. "So everything we thought, everything Dad taught us..."

"...still applies," Rose interrupted. Both brothers turned to her, startled. She looked hesitant to go on, but when neither one said anything, she continued. "I mean, doesn't it? The work you did, you still saved innocent people, all the things your dad taught you work, right? Salting the rooms and silver knives and holy water. Just because they're alien doesn't mean they're any less _awful_. I've seen some pretty awful aliens, with the Doctor. He's had to kill them sometimes, too. I mean, set him in front of a Dalek and he goes _berserk_. And the demons, they sided with the Daleks during the Time War. There's still bad in the world. And there's still good." She looked at them pointedly. "Hold it together, boys."

Sam nodded, a little stunned, and said, "Point being, the Shadow Architect will believe us, at least that demons exist and that there's the possibility for possession. You okay, Dean?"

His brother shrugged, then nodded. "Sure," he lied. "Keep going."

Sam didn't argue. Not now. As long as Dean could keep it together, they could deal with this later. And if his brother could do anything, it was keep it together under impossible circumstances. "So we find the Shadow Architect, try to keep from getting arrested, drop the Doctor's name. We find the possessed justice and exorcise him. Or her. Parasitism is against the law according to the Shadow Proclamation, so not only will the charges be dropped against us, but the demons will be held accountable for possessing the justice. Then the Shadow Proclamation will help us spring the Doctor from Hell." He paused. "That might be among the weirdest collections of sentences I've ever said."

"And that's saying something," Dean said. Sam grinned appreciatively at him, and Dean returned the smile, if weaker.

"Let me do the talking," Sam said. "The Doctor put the things I need to say in my head. Apparently there's an..._etiquette_. And we can get in pretty bad trouble if we don't follow it. So I'll handle it."

Dean and Rose both nodded, and Dean said, "So what do _we_ do?"

"Rose knows more about aliens than either of us," Sam replied, "so if we run into something that the Doctor didn't prepare me for she's our best bet. And you...won't stay here, and I know that, so you should probably do like the Doctor said: stay close, stay calm, stay quiet, and look penitent. Also we have to leave our guns here...we have to make it look like we're not here for trouble."

There was some hurt, some anger in the look that Dean gave him, but there was nothing else he could have said. There was nothing Dean could do to help them right now, but there's no _way_ he would have agreed to stay in the TARDIS. Really, his brother was a liability, and taking him along was a risk that Sam could only hope won't bite them in the ass. Dean's world was just thrown out of alignment, and now they were in a situation like they'd never been in before. They _had_ to keep cool heads. And a cool head was not among Dean's strong suits. "Fine," he said shortly. "Can we get this over with?"

Sam wanted to apologize, but he couldn't. So he just nodded and led them out of the TARDIS.

He cracked the door open and stuck his head out to have a look at their surroundings. But as soon as he did, he realized that they were in trouble.

The sound of guns being cocked was the first thing he noticed, and his eyes widened as he saw seven Judoon standing in front of the TARDIS. A pale, thin woman was standing in the middle of them, white-skinned and white-haired and red-eyed. Other than her unusual coloring, she looked human. Sam raised his hands slowly and stepped out, followed by Rose and Dean. Rose closed the door to the TARDIS and put her hands up immediately, and Dean acquiesced only after a particularly dirty look from Sam, and then only reluctantly.

"Article Fifteen," the woman said crisply. "Identify yourselves."

"Sam and Dean Winchester, and Rose Tyler," Sam said cautiously. "Of Earth. We're—"

"So kind to turn yourselves in," the woman said. "It saves us the trouble of finding you on that backwater planet of yours. Cuff the males."

"Wait!" Sam cried as the Judoon moved to comply. "Wait, please. We need to speak to the Shadow Architect."

The woman raised a barely-visible eyebrow delicately, and a small smile played at the corners of her lips. "Well, it's your lucky day," she said. "I am the Shadow Architect."

Sam faltered, swallowing hard. "Um. Okay. We're with the Doctor. There's been a misunderstanding, manipulation. He sent us here. He's in trouble."

The Shadow Architect walked the few steps that separated her from Sam, looking up at him. "The Doctor," she said quietly, "is not the only one in trouble here, Sam Winchester."

Her eyes flashed black.

Sam staggered back a step. "It's _you_," he said hoarsely. He felt strong hands grab his wrists and cuff him. He tried to struggle, but it was pointless. He could see as they cuffed Dean that the cuffs were strung together with some kind of energy field. He wasn't breaking out of that.

"Cuff the girl, too, as an accomplice," the Shadow Architect said, and the Judoon obeyed. Rose didn't put up a fight, but glanced around the hallway they had landed in with sharp eyes. Sam hoped to God she noticed something he'd missed. He looked away from her when the Shadow Architect continued, "As I said, good of you to turn yourselves in. We'll expedite this process, sentence you quickly, seeing as the evidence is so clear-cut. We'll have you before a justice post-haste."

The Judoon shoved the three of them forward as the Shadow Architect led them down the hallway. "You won't get away with this," Sam said, feeling stupid and clichéd even as he spoke. "They'll notice something's wrong. These aren't a bunch of blind humans. They're aliens. Like you."

The Shadow Architect's red eyes flicked over to him for a second. "Been reading up on some history," she said lightly. "The Doctor, I suppose. And no, you're right. The Shadow Proclamation is not full of stupid humans. It's full of stupid non-humans." She smiled, and Sam felt ill. "Your people aren't special one way or the other, Sam. They're not the bright burning center of the universe as they'd like to think, but they're not some cesspool of idiocy and degradation. They're quite average. And as the word implies, so are most other races. Once the Time Lords were gone, there weren't any races left here that aren't as easily fooled as your average human." She glanced at him again, and the malevolent light in her eyes belied her sympathetic smile. "So I'm afraid you can't count on your Time Lord friend's allies here to bail you out. You've been framed, my sweet, fair and square." She turned to Dean. "Or rather, big brother has."

Dean, and for this Sam thanked any deities who might be listening, said nothing. He scowled, but he said nothing.

The hall they walked down began to grow more crowded, and Sam watched with wide eyes as a huge variety of aliens stopped to stare at them. He could feel his heart begin to race, and he knew Dean's would be doing the same. His whole life had trained him that when you saw something that looked like what he was seeing, it was fight or flight. He wasn't allowed to do either.

They passed a tall female, reptilian but humanoid, accompanied by a petite human girl. The reptile woman held up a hand, and the Shadow Architect stopped. The woman looked at Dean, and then Sam, up and down, her blue eyes appraising. "These are the Winchesters," she said, her voice a cultured mezzo. It was not a question.

"They are, Justice," the Shadow Architect replied. "I am taking them to their holding cell until they are to stand trial."

The justice held her hand out, and her human assistant handed her what looked like a tablet computer. The woman traced an intricate set of strokes on the tablet, and nodded briskly. "Architect, do they have counsel?" she asked.

"No, Justice," the Shadow Architect said.

"Very well. I will see them on my docket," she said with an air of impenetrable authority. "Have them ready within the hour."

The Shadow Architect smiled, and there was nothing about that smile that Sam liked. "Of course, Justice," she said. The justice inclined her head, and walked away briskly, followed by her assistant.

The Shadow Architect nodded to the Judoon, and they shoved the Winchesters and Rose forward, continuing to their holding cells. Rose walked up right behind Sam. "That's bad," she whispered. "That justice is a Silurian. They _hate_ humans. We have to be _very_ careful."

Sam nodded. He glanced at his brother, who was glowering down at the floor in front of his feet, making it a point to ignore the aliens that surrounded them. Dean's shoulders were tight, his hands balled into fists. Sam said a silent prayer that his brother would be able to behave himself in court.

They were shoved onto a bench at the end of the hallway. Sam looked around, confused, but when the Judoon backed away from them, bars of the same energy field used in their cuffs rose from the floor to meet the ceiling, creating a cell. Oh.

"You should prepare yourselves," the Shadow Architect said, with that awful smile on her face. "Perhaps the Doctor's bitch knows, but for the benefit of you boys, Silurians aren't known for their love of humans. I don't think I could have planned this better." She leaned in as close to the bars as she could get. "I suppose you could spend this time finding peace with your maker."

Dean leaned forward, and Sam tried to grab his wrist but realized that they were both still cuffed. "Yeah, I guess we could," he said, baring his teeth in something that was not really a smile. "We'll just sit here and have a chat with _Christo_."

The Architect flinched and sucked in a breath through her teeth. "You little bastard," she hissed. "I'll flay your skin from your—"

Suddenly she remembered where she was, and looked around to see a few of the aliens milling around looking at her strangely. She calmed herself, and turned back to glare at Dean. "Enjoy your pathetic defiance while you can, human," she said, her voice smooth as silk. "You'll be Hell's so fast, you'll get whiplash." She turned on her heel and stormed away, leaving the three of them alone.

Sam let out a breath he'd barely realized he was holding. "Well," he said, slowly, "this wasn't part of the plan."

"That Crowley dick lied to the Doctor," Dean said. "He said it was a justice that his demon possessed. The Doc couldn't have known it was the Architect chick. What a surprise: a lying demon." Dean leaned heavily against the wall. "So now we're really screwed."

Rose bit her lip. "Maybe we can get to someone in court, someone who knows the Doctor," she said. "Obviously that's why they chose the Shadow Architect, because they knew she knows the Doctor. But he's got _loads_ of friends here, or at least people who owe him favors. There's got to be somebody we can turn to."

"Yeah," Sam said, not because he believed it, but because it didn't help to say anything else. That was the only out he could see, the only way that they could get Rose back to Earth, save the Doctor from Hell, and get himself and Dean back to America to figure a way out of Dean's deal. Because from what the Architect had said, if they got sentenced here, Dean was still headed to Hell. And that was something Sam would _not_ let happen.

"Okay," he said, "we just need to mount a good defense. I mean, it wasn't like we _knew_. And maybe ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking it, but it should soften the penalties."

"You're talking like we're at a human court," Dean said. "Who the hell knows how this place works?"

"The Doctor works with them," Rose interjected. "I can't imagine that the Doctor would help them if they were—"

"You know what?" Dean interrupted, and Rose frowned. "I don't care if the Doctor trusts them. Because demons have taken over the honchos, so I don't think it _matters_ that the Doctor is all buddy-buddy with them. And we're set to appear in front of a judge who hates humans for whatever reason. I think we're pretty screwed, and I don't really give a crap about the Doctor's opinion. He's not here."

"Right, no, he's in _Hell_ to save us," Rose returned heatedly. "If you've forgotten. And maybe you don't know, but he feels pain just like we do. He's just a lot more resilient. So what I want to do is get an ally and get out of here, so we can go back and rescue him. Because you don't want to live on an Earth without the Doctor, let me tell you that. You haven't any idea how many times he's saved the planet."

"Yeah, well, in case you haven't noticed, that's our line of business, too," Dean spat. "So sorry, but I'm not extra worried about breaking the Doctor out of jail. I'm more worried about getting _us_ out of here."

"You would be," Rose shot back. "I don't even know why the Doctor bothered—"

"Guys!" Sam cried, and they fell silent. "This is really not helping. We don't need to be at each others' throats right now. We need to be figuring out a game plan."

"Thought the Doc uploaded those into your brain," Dean snarked.

Sam counted to ten in his head. "Right. That was before we knew that the Shadow Architect was the one that Crowley's demon possessed. So now we need to come up with a new strategy."

"Make a break for it when they take us out of here and see if we can hitch a ride back to Earth," Dean suggested. "Or, take out the courtroom with our nonexistent weapons in a blaze of glory. Or, roll with the punches and figure it out as we go along. Like usual."

Sam had been getting ready to argue with Dean's flippancy, but he realized at the end that Dean was right. They didn't have a plan. The Doctor's plan had gone wrong. So they might as well do what they were good at, which was improvisation. "Okay," he said. "Yeah. The Doctor put enough info in my head that I can figure out how to defend us, how to not piss off that justice any more than we already have. We'll just...figure it out."

He glanced at Rose. Dean, obviously, was on board with the plan since it was his, but he wasn't sure how Rose would take the seat-of-the-pants option. But she was nodding, and shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know why the Doctor even bothered giving you a plan," she said. "His plans never work anyway. At least not the ones he sets out with."

"So we're okay?" Sam asked. He looked at his Companions.

Woah.

His companions. Lowercase _c_.

Dean took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but Sam knew that was his weird way of saying _yes, we're okay_. Rose bit her lip and smiled unsteadily. "Sure," she said. "We're okay. We'll be fine."

"Hope those years of pre-law pay off," Dean said.

Sam laughed anxiously. "Right?" He was going to continue, but the sound of heels on marble floors, accompanied by heavy boots, told them that the Shadow Architect was returning with the Judoon.

"It has _not_ been an hour," Dean said angrily when the Architect appeared in front of their cell.

"The esteemed justice said _within_ the hour," the Architect replied with a smirk. The Judoon disabled the cell bars and grabbed each of them by the arm. "I hope you've prepared your defense."

"We're ready," Sam said quickly, before Dean could make another smart remark. The Architect glanced at him askance, her eyes narrow, but didn't respond to him.

As they walked down the hall to the court room, it occurred to Sam that while he wasn't the world's most honest person, he hoped he wasn't lying.


	12. Chapter 12

Author's Note: Things get a little timey-wimey here, and there are what could be construed as **vague spoilers for Doctor Who series 6**. You are forewarned.  
Did I lose you guys with the last twist? Review and let me know what y'all are thinking!

* * *

As they entered the courtroom, Sam's first thought was that it was almost disappointingly ordinary.

It wasn't even as impressive as TV courtrooms in all those legal dramas, all dark wood and lush furnishings and intimidating paraphernalia of the country the show was set in. Here, a plain desk that served as a bench sat atop a slightly raised platform, the justice's seat next to the witness box. One table faced the desk, with three chairs sitting behind it. The room was a sterile white, and the desk, table, and chairs were all made out of a uniform gray material that looked somewhere between stone and metal. Other than that, the room was empty. No flags, no medallions set into the desk, no benches for witnesses or spectators, not even a table each for defense and prosecution. It was very small, very sparse, very plain.

But it did have a pretty stunning view out the window on the left of the room. Through the window could be seen some of the asteroid cluster that the Shadow Proclamation was built on, as well as what looked like it might be a closer perspective on the Pleiades than one could get from Earth. Sam found himself staring at it.

He startled when the Judoon forced the three of them down into the chairs behind the table, Rose sitting between the brothers. The Architect stood to their right, next to Sam, her thin hands clasped together, a smug look on her unnaturally pale face.

Sam leaned over the table and met his brother's eyes. "You gotta be cool," he whispered. "Let me handle this."

"Sure," Dean said dismissively, looking away and out the window. He made a show of pretending to suddenly gain an appreciation of astronomy.

"Dean, I'm serious," Sam insisted. "We can't afford to piss her off." Dean didn't reply, so Sam sighed in frustration and turned to Rose. "Why do her people hate humans so much, anyway?"

Rose shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, Sam. I wish I did. We haven't met a Silurian before, so the Doctor didn't tell me anything specific. Something about a territory struggle at some point in history-I don't know if it was on Earth or somewhere else, just, at some point they wanted some land that we had. And they felt _really_ slighted when they didn't get it. But it's..._ancestral_. Their people have hated us for a long time."

Sam sighed. "Great. So all we have to do is plead our case to a reptile woman whose people hate us and have always hated us, while being guarded by a _demon_ and a bunch of rhinoceros."

"Rhinoceros?" Dean asked, turning back around. "Wait, more than one rhinoceros is still called rhinoceros?"

Sam stared at him. "Is that seriously what you took from that?"

Dean flashed him a grin. "You know me. I'm all about the priorities."

Suddenly Sam knew what he was doing, and he smiled back. "Yeah, priorities," he said sarcastically. "I'm sure we'll have lots of time to worry about _priorities_ when we're rotting in space jail."

Dean snorted. "Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Are we done?" Rose asked tensely. "Do you have plan, Sam?"

Sam stared ahead of them at the empty desk, and shrugged. "Well, I have as close to a plan as I'm likely to get," he said quietly.

They heard a door opening just outside of the courtroom and settled down, all looking toward the source of the sound. The reptile woman's human assistant walked in, holding the tablet computer. She looked like she was in her early twenties at best, with dark, straight hair pulled into a severe bun and serious eyes. She spoke in a thick British accent as she said, "Docket 17-A-Delta-Epsilon, Samuel and Dean Winchester, accused of crimes against galactic peace and the unlawful death of a refugee, and Rose Tyler, accused of being accomplice to the same. The honorable Justice Vastra presiding. All rise."

Sam and Rose stood, and Rose elbowed Dean in the shoulder until he stood, rolling his eyes. The Shadow Architect folded her hands in front of her, smiling slightly, as the reptilian woman—Justice Vastra—entered the courtroom and sat at her desk. She was robed all in white, making her green scales stand out strikingly. Her impassive eyes studied them for a moment before she reached out a hand and the human girl handed her the tablet.

Justice Vastra fixed them with an imperious look, and then glanced down at the tablet in her hand. "Dean and Samuel Winchester, you are accused of the murder of—" (_Seriously_, Sam thought as Justice Vastra made that staticky sound, _could everyone else make that noise?_) "—a refugee on your world. Rose Tyler, you are accused of providing them aid and comfort. The penalty for the unlawful death of the refugee caused by the inhabitant of a Class 5 planet is life imprisonment, and the penalty for the aiding and abetting of such an act is fifteen to twenty years imprisonment, in either a holding facility or pocket dimension decided upon by this court. We see that you have no counsel, and we are aware that you are from a Class 5 planet and thus not familiar with the workings of the Court. We are, however, familiar with the judicial proceedings of your planet." The last two words were enunciated with venom, and Sam looked anxiously at Rose, who bit her lip. "If you wish to defend yourselves, you may do so according to your traditions."

"You're up, Sammy," Dean murmured. Sam nodded, taking a deep breath, and stood up.

He closed his eyes for a moment and let the protocol that the Doctor had embedded in his mind wash over him. Let the cleverness of the Doctor sink into him, prepare him for what he had to do. He needed the Doctor's words, and he needed them fluently. He rolled his shoulders back.

"Your honor," he began, "we firstly throw ourselves upon the mercy of the court."

"Are you serious?" Dean hissed.

Sam threw him a nasty look. "Shut up," he whispered, and glared ferociously when Dean did nothing but make a face at him. He turned back to Justice Vastra. Now, he was no expert at reading Silurian facial expressions, but he could have _sworn_ he saw the faintest hint of a grin on her face. It was gone so fast he could have imagined it, though, and by the time he was fully turned to her she was watching him with neutrality. Her human assistant, on the other hand, ducked her head and used her hands to hide whatever face it was she was making. "Um. As your honor knows, my brother and Ms. Tyler and I all come from a Class 5 planet, and the three of us have only recently made first contact with an extraterrestrial life form, and become aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life."

"Except for the creatures you refer to as _demons_," Justice Vastra interrupted, her blank expression belied by the heat of her voice. "As well as lupine haemovariforms and countless other alien species." Sam flinched.

"Yes, your honor," he said, "but we were...under a false impression of their origins." The Doctor's words were faltering on his tongue, and he begged...he didn't know, the Doctor, God, his brain, not to let him down. He couldn't afford it, not now. "We didn't know they were...extraterrestrial."

"Ignorance does not excuse wrongdoing," Justice Vastra said coldly.

Sam nodded. "No, I know."

"Do you?" the justice asked. "Because it sounds to me like you are trying to exonerate yourself by telling me that you didn't know the creature you killed was alien in origin. What difference does that make, truly? The fact that she was extraterrestrial only means that this case falls under my jurisdiction as an interplanetary matter. It does not mean that your brother was any less responsible for her death. After all, murder is murder, is it not?"

Sam felt heat in the back of his neck, and realized he was getting angry. He took a deep breath. "Yes, your honor," he said, "but it was in defense."

"I was under the impression that your brother did not even make an attempt to speak to the refugee before he shot her," the justice replied. "Am I incorrect?"

"He couldn't speak her language," Sam said.

"_You_ could."

"I tried-"

"Evidently not terribly hard," Justice Vastra said. "From what I gather, the time elapsed between the two of you entering the hospital and the death of the refugee was barely ten minutes. Accounting for you searching the hospital, finding the correct room, identifying her, and her supposed attempt to harm you, that leaves little time for any type of negotiation."

Sam hesitated for a second, trying to gather his thoughts. It was evidently a second too long for Dean.

"You know what?" Dean said, standing up. "This is crap."

"Dean!" Sam shouted, but his brother had already walked around the table to stand in front of the justice, who looked down at him with a puzzled expression. The Judoon had started for Dean, but she held a hand out to stop them.

"I suppose you may approach the bench," she said, a touch of amusement in her voice. Sam stepped forward, but stopped when she glanced at him, her eyes wide with false innocence. "I believe your brother has the floor, Mr. Winchester."

"Dean, don't do this," Sam said, but Dean ignored him very pointedly, even shifting a bit so that his back was more towards Sam.

"You want to know why I shot that alien?" Dean asked. Justice Vastra cocked her head to the side, studied him for a moment, and then nodded.

"Yes, Mr. Winchester, that is rather the point of a defense," she remarked dryly. "There's no denying that you killed her, so you might as well tell me _why_."

Dean squared his shoulders. "Because she was going to kill my brother," he said. "Because _she_ was in that girl, Sally, and the both of them were playing Pinocchio to some asshole demon trying to set us up for exactly this, and trying to set up the Doctor. She was going to stab my brother in the throat. So I shot her."

Justice Vastra frowned. "Her people are renowned for their non-aggressive nature," she said. "You say that she was possessed by a _demon_? That is a serious charge, Mr. Winchester. Invasion by parasitism is a war crime."

"You heard what I said," Dean snapped. Sam glanced at the Shadow Architect, whose was standing extremely still, doing her best to keep an even expression on her face. He could see in the set of her jaw, though, that it was all she could do not to leap at Dean. He felt a little hope rising in his chest. They were getting to her.

"And what of your previous record?" Justice Vastra was asking when he turned back to her. "Even if I were to believe you about this incident, it would not be the first time that you in particular, Mr. Winchester, were under suspicion for the murder of an extraterrestrial life form. We have quite the record on you and your brother, and on your late father, as well."

Sam watched his brother as his posture changed subtly. Became softer, resigned, but at the same time, grounded. "Yeah," Dean said. "Yeah, no, I bet you do. And if what I did was wrong, then okay, I guess you would know better than me. I mean, I am just some yokel from a Class 5 planet, just found out aliens exist and all. But I did the best I could. So did my dad. So did Sam."

"Dean, come on," Sam said urgently. He could feel his hands trembling.

"When I was four a demon killed my mom," Dean continued, ignoring his brother. Sam looked anxiously at Justice Vastra, but she seemed to not notice anything but Dean. Her eyes were slightly narrowed as she watched him. She was leaning towards him just the most minute amount. "My dad took us on the road after that. Hunting things. Saving innocent people. And yeah, maybe he got a little..." Dean hesitated. "Maybe he overdid it sometimes. Maybe we made some wrong calls, ganked some monsters that weren't really all that bad. But by the time Sammy and I were grown, demons knew us. By name. By reputation. It was us or them. And if we're up here, if you're gonna put us through the wringer, where the hell are they?"

"Dean!" Sam cried, as Justice Vastra's eyes narrowed further.

"Excuse me?" she said, her voice slow and cold.

Dean ran his tongue over his lips nervously, but pressed forward. "I said, where are the demons, if we're gonna get nailed for this? All they _do_ is kill people. Humans. For no reason but that it's _fun_, or, or to release other things that'll kill_ more_ humans. My brother and me, what we do is survive. However we can. And maybe we don't do it right, I don't know. But my dad left me with one job, and that's to protect my brother. I saw something about to hurt him, about to _kill_ him, and I protected him." He took a deep breath, but it was steady, and the look in his eyes was absolutely unafraid as he continued. "So if you're gonna find me guilty of something, find me guilty of protecting my brother." He paused. "Your _honor_."

As Sam watched him in horror, Dean returned calmly to his seat, and glanced at Rose. Rose was looking at him in much the same manner as Sam. As the thought occurred to him, Dean looked back up at the justice. "And, by the way, she didn't aid _or_ abet us," he said, pointing to Rose. She frowned, her eyes wide. "In fact, she mostly just got in the way." Seemingly done at that, he sat down.

Then he changed his mind, stood up, and added, "I rest my case."

Sam stared at his brother for a long time. Eventually Dean looked over to him and grinned, giving him thumbs-up with both hands. Sam just shook his head silently, running a hand over his face.

The Doctor hadn't seen that one coming, that was for sure.

Justice Vastra looked at Sam. "Mr. Winchester, do you have anything to add?" she asked.

Sam shook his head miserably. "No, your honor."

The justice nodded crisply. "Then you may take your seat."

Sam returned to his seat, sat down, and put his head in his hands. This had all gone so wrong. Rose had spoken so highly of having the Doctor on her side; maybe he'd put too much faith in him. He'd trusted too much that the Doctor's plan was foolproof. It clearly had not been.

Justice Vastra glanced at her human assistant, who looked up at her expectantly. "Jenny, would you get the defendants some water while I render the verdict?" she asked. The girl nodded, stepped out of the room, and returned with a pitcher of water and three glasses. She set them up carefully in front of Rose and the Winchesters and poured the water into each glass.

Sam watched her as she did. Her hands trembled just the smallest amount, and she was biting her lip. Under her lashes her eyes kept shifting to the left. He thought she was looking at him, but after a moment he realized that she was watching the Shadow Architect. Sam frowned deeply. What was going on?

When Jenny was finished she returned to her place by Justice Vastra's desk and set the pitcher on the witness box. She nodded to the Silurian woman, who smiled slightly at her. Justice Vastra then turned back to them, her expression unreadable.

"Rose Tyler, for the charge of aiding and abetting the Winchester brothers in murder, of providing them aid and comfort in this act, the court finds you not guilty." Rose sat up straight, looking extremely confused. She looked at Sam, who smiled uncertainly at her.

Sam looked back up at the bench, and Justice Vastra met his eyes. "Samuel and Dean Winchester," she said, "in the charge of unlawful murder of a refugee alien citizen on your Class 5 planet, this court finds you _exorcizamus te, omnis immundis spiritus._"

Before Sam could understand what was going on, the Shadow Architect had fallen to her knees, shrieking, and Jenny had grabbed the pitcher of water off of the witness box. She took a few quick steps towards the Architect and threw the water at her. The Architect screamed louder as the water—the _holy water—_burned her skin.

Sam stood up quickly once his brain had caught up with his disbelieving eyes. "_Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica_," he said, taking his own cup of holy water and throwing it onto the Architect. Dean and Rose followed suit, bolting up from their chairs to surround the possessed woman.

As he continued to chant the too-familiar ritual, he stared at Justice Vastra. She had walked around from behind the bench and knelt on the floor next to the Shadow Architect, pinning her to the ground as she thrashed and screamed. Justice Vastra looked up at him as he recited, and bared her teeth in a vicious smile.

"_Te rogamus,_" Sam said, and was joined by Justice Vastra as he finished, "_audi nos_."

The thick black smoke finished pouring out of the Shadow Architect's mouth, and the woman slumped to the ground, unconscious. Justice Vastra waited to make sure she was truly out, pressing two fingers to a spot on her collarbone, and then stood up, dusting her knees. "Well, that was _bracing_," she said. She looked at Jenny, then pulled her into an embrace, kissing the human girl on the forehead. "You were _brilliant_, my dear," she added.

"Um," Sam began, he thought rather cleverly given the circumstances, "...what just happened?"

Her arm still around Jenny's shoulders, Justice Vastra smiled at Sam. "The Doctor just happened," she said. "He always has a few favors he can call in."

"How did he call you?" Rose asked. "He's trapped. We're about to go rescue him."

Justice Vastra cocked her head to the side. "Dear, you're his Companion. Surely you can figure this out."

Rose's eyes widened. "The Doctor _created_ a predetermination paradox?" she cried.

Justice Vastra shrugged. "He must feel very strongly about the three of you," she remarked. "Because, yes, he did. He asks me, when we meet—which we haven't, yet, in your time—to come and do this for him. I become a Justice of the Shadow Proclamation _because_ he asks me to, so that I can do this. And he asks me because you go back and you tell him what happened here today."

Dean made a face like he was about to speak, and then stopped. He frowned. "At no point did what you just said make any sense," he said.

Jenny laughed, and Justice Vastra smiled. "You must be new to the Doctor," she said. "You'll find that most things that he has a hand in don't make any sense."

"How did you know the exorcism?" Sam asked.

Justice Vastra sighed as though it were the stupidest question she'd ever been asked. "Because you teach it to the Doctor, dear," she said. "So that he can teach it to me when the time comes."

"And what about the fifth degree you gave us in there?" Dean demanded, his voice tinted now with anger. "You couldn't have just, you know, done the exorcism right away?"

The Silurian fixed him with an even glare. "Dear, I am _actually_ a justice," she said. "And you were legitimately wanted by this court. I had to _actually_ hear your defense. And, if you're interested, you were found not guilty by reason of self-defense. Additionally I've cleared your records entirely of any wrongdoing, and you've been flagged as associates of the Doctor. I doubt anyone connected with this court will bother you again." Her expression softened, and that glint of amusement returned to her eyes as she continued to look at Dean. "And by the way, _thank you_."

Dean frowned. "For what?"

"For giving me a passionate defense," she said. She shook her head at Sam, and said, "You did your best, dear, but it was so _formal_. I needed something bigger, something emotive. The Shadow Proclamation is not without compassion, and self-defense and defense of family are reasonable motivations to violence. So, thanks to your brother's speech, the two of you are now not only safe from further legal action by the Shadow Proclamation, but shielded by association with the Doctor if anyone were to try to bring you up on charges."

"The Doctor really has that much pull?" Sam asked, doing his best to ignore his brother's _told you so_ face.

Justice Vastra hesitated a moment. "The Doctor," she said carefully, "is a remarkable man. We all owe him debts. But I'm going to be honest with you. You are now known associates of the Doctor, and every sentient species that knows anything about the Doctor knows that you do _not_ interfere with the Doctor's friends. Not if you want to see tomorrow."

A silence fell at her words. Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. _Not if you want to see tomorrow._ It wasn't that Sam hadn't thought that the Doctor was powerful; he'd known that since his vision. But to hear it phrased like that stood in such contrast to the thin, ordinary-looking man he'd met, the man that exuded such childlike enthusiasm about everything. Rose didn't seem surprised by the justice's statement, though. She just looked down at her hands, her expression thoughtful.

"We have to go rescue him," Rose said. "Justice Vastra, could you arrange—"

"An ultimatum to the demon known as Crowley that he will either release the Doctor into your custody or face a subpoena?" Justice Vastra said, and Jenny handed Rose an official-looking envelope. "And we will work on our end to make sure that they face consequences for what they've done. But they've gone rogue, and there's only so much we can do. Jenny and I will accompany you to retrieve the Doctor."

"What about his timeline?" Rose asked uncomfortably, turning the envelope over in her hands. "He hasn't met you yet."

Something dark crossed Justice Vastra's face, and Sam wondered if Rose noticed. The justice took a deep breath. "I asked him the same thing. He said that I need to be with you," she explained. "He said that...he won't recognize me, that it won't matter."

Rose straightened suddenly. "What does that mean?" she demanded. "What does that mean, he won't recognize you?"

"We ought to go" was all that Justice Vastra would say. Sensing that Rose was going to fight more, Sam took the intiative and started the walk back to the TARDIS as Jenny called for paramedics to take care of the Shadow Architect.

Justice Vastra walked behind Sam and Dean with her arm around Jenny's shoulders, occasionally drawing her closer and whispering into her ear. Sam let them into the TARDIS, and the justice and Jenny settled themselves by the wall, their fingers interlaced. Dean leaned over to Sam and murmured, "Is it weird if I think that's a little hot?"

"No," Justice Vastra said dryly from across the control room, and Dean jumped guiltily. "It's only weird that you said something about it."

Sam laughed out loud, and saw Rose stifle a laugh of her own past the obvious anxiety on her face. He clapped his stunned brother on the shoulder and began to input the coordinates for their return trip.

(The coordinates to Hell.)

His hands hesitated for a moment over the board as that thought flashed through his head, but he put it aside. Maybe it didn't all go right, maybe the Doctor had been short-sighted, but there was _really_ a Shadow Proclamation and they had _really_ had a criminal record in an intergalactic court. And now that was expunged, and they were protected; one less threat they had to worry about. And the Doctor had sent himself to Hell so that they would be safe. No matter how insane it felt to be voluntarily piloting their ship back into Hell, Sam would do it to save the man who'd put his life at risk to protect them.

He pulled the last lever.


	13. Chapter 13

Author's Note: I feel like I should change the genre to "angst" for this chapter alone. This one was hard to write. (Which was not helped by the fact that my computer crashed and corrupted the file, so I had to write this chapter twice...)

* * *

When the TARDIS stilled, the first thing Sam noticed was the scent of sulfur.

He could see that Dean noticed it, too, from the stiffening of his brother's spine, the almost imperceptible paling of his cheek. Dean grinned easily when Rose made a crack about air sickness and not minding planes anymore, but Sam saw through it. This was the last place in the universe his brother wanted to be. This was the last place he wanted to be, too, but it was different. For him, this was a nightmare.

For his brother, a preview.

"So we just, what, nip in and grab the Doctor?" Rose asked once Sam turned around.

"I don't think we're gonna _just_ anything," Dean replied darkly. "I don't guess the demons left the Doctor hanging out waiting for us to get back. Which means we have to go in and find him." He picked up the Colt from where he'd set it when they left the TARDIS at the Shadow Proclamation, and checked the chamber. "I got five shots. Sammy?"

"Two in my shotgun, two in my pocket," Sam replied automatically.

Dean scowled. "So nine shots altogether," he said. "Against all the hordes of Hell. I'm not liking those odds."

Vastra (on the return trip she had asked them to drop the _Justice_, as it sounded too formal to her, and she considered herself among colleagues now) cleared her throat, raising the envelope containing the subpoena. "They will let us through," she said confidently. "Two officials of the Shadow Proclamation carrying a subpoena, and three Companions of the Doctor? They will let us through."

"Lady, I don't know what kind of math you're using, but these are _demons_," Dean retorted. "They don't give a crap what's in that envelope of yours, and you're crazy if you think—"

"Well, now that we've heard from the expert in intergalactic politics," Vastra interrupted dryly, "if I could share my thoughts I'd be gratified." Dean glowered, but quieted. "No, Dean, they won't be _happy_ to let us through. And I don't doubt that they'll do everything in their power to make it an unpleasant journey for us. But they won't _dare_ harm us. They understand that there would be reprisal, from the Shadow Proclamation for me and Jenny, and worse, from the _Doctor_ for the three of you."

Sam shook his head. "But the Doctor's their prisoner," he said. "Why would they be afraid of the Doctor...avenging us, or whatever?"

Vastra stared at him, again as though he'd asked a stupid question, and smiled. That smile had nothing to do with humor. "The Doctor is their prisoner because he can't be otherwise, not while keeping you safe," she said. "The Doctor is a terribly dangerous man, Sam, at the best of times. And the mildest man becomes a threat when he has nothing left to lose. The Doctor, when he has nothing left to lose, is a force of nature, and a vengeful one."

"Like during the Time War," Sam said softly.

Vastra suppressed a shudder. "Yes. I didn't know him then, not until long after in his own timeline, but after what he was forced to do..."

"He told me," Sam said. "About his people destroying all those planets."

Vastra looked up and tilted her head. "No, that's not what I mean," she said. "That's not why the Doctor became so dangerous. Don't you know?" When Sam said nothing, she ran a hand over her face. "The Doctor ended the Time War, Sam. He is the one who saved the universe from the threat that would have destroyed it."

"I don't understand," said Dean. "Why is that bad? That sounds like a good thing."

Vastra turned her piercing blue gaze to Dean. "The threat of the Time War came from the Daleks and the Time Lords," she said. "And the Doctor destroyed them. _All_ of them."

Sam stared at her.

"Wait," Dean said, catching up. Sam could see the dawning horror in his eyes. "Isn't that what the Doctor said he was? A Time Lord?"

"Yes," Vastra replied, simply.

"All of them?" Sam asked.

"All of them. He is the last of the Time Lords."

"Holy shit," Dean breathed.

"It was his planet or the universe," Rose said quietly, mournfully. "He didn't have a choice."

"We always have a choice, Rose," Vastra said, "Time Lords more than most. He made the choice that would save the most lives. But don't think that just because we are grateful to him, that it makes him any less a terrible force. No, if the Doctor did not want to be the prisoner of the demons, he would not be."

"So he's only there because of us," Dean said.

"That is correct," Vastra replied.

Dean tucked the Colt into the back of his jeans and nodded grimly. "Then let's get him out of here," he said.

Sam put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from running into Hell guns blazing, and turned to Rose, Vastra, and Jenny. "We stay together," he said. "There's none of this horror-movie-style splitting up. We find Crowley, and we get the Doctor back to the TARDIS. No side missions, no matter what they show us. It won't be real, but they'll use any memories they can get a hold of, any ammo they can find, against us. And no getting back at Crowley or the other demons, no matter how much we want to. Don't get distracted."

The three of them nodded their assent, and Sam looked at Dean, who nodded, too. Sam swallowed and took a deep breath. "All right then. Let's break the Doctor out of Hell."

As soon as Sam opened the door, the scent of sulfur that had been creeping in hit them all full-force. Rose gagged, and Jenny succumbed to a fit of coughing. Vastra supported Jenny, and Dean grabbed Rose as she doubled over. She looked up at him and gave him a thumbs-up, and he let go of her arms. She straightened, rubbing her throat, then putting her fist over her mouth. She smiled weakly.

Jenny recovered quickly, though Vastra kept her arm around her partner's waist as they walked. Vastra looked the smallest bit amused. "You humans and your unfiltered air intake," she said. "It does make things inconvenient, doesn't it?"

"At least I'm warm-blooded and don't have to take a _nap_ if I get a chill," Jenny muttered in reply. Vastra laughed and kissed the human on the forehead. Jenny didn't look at her, but smiled reluctantly.

Sam looked up, and instantly regretted it. A latticework of heavy chains rose up seemingly forever. Through a dull, sickly green light, he could make out that interspersed among the chains were human forms, hung on the chains by thick hooks through their shoulders, their sides, their legs. "Don't look up," he murmured to Dean.

"Yeah, a little late for that," his brother replied, sounding like the breath had been knocked out of him.

"Dean—"

"We got a job to do, Sammy," Dean snapped, then continued in a milder tone: "I can wait until we get home to have a breakdown."

Sam bit his lip hard enough to hurt. "Dean, you can—"

"Sam, stop." Dean's tone didn't brook any argument, and Sam was silent. "Seriously. We can deal with this later. We have to find the Doctor."

A thin, stony path led away from the TARDIS, and Sam figured that while it might lead to a trap, it was their best guess to find the Doctor. Maybe it led to some kind of hub, or Crowley's office or something. Everything he thought, all the words he used in his head, sounded ridiculous. Office? Did they have _offices_ in Hell? But his mind repelled the idea of anything more horrific than that. He was having enough trouble fighting off the horror that lay above him.

(That lay waiting for Dean.)

He physically flinched at that thought, and Dean hesitated a moment, about to ask what was wrong. Sam shook his head quickly and continued walking, and his brother did likewise.

Rose walked right behind the brothers, keeping so close she almost stepped on their heels. "This is the worst place I've ever been to," she said softly. "I can't believe it's just more aliens. Even the Daleks...made sense, in their own, awful way. This is just cruelty."

_Not helpful._ "Yeah," Sam replied noncommitally.

Rose's voice turned vicious as she added, "I'm _glad_ the Time Lords destroyed their planet."

"What?" Dean asked, startled.

Rose looked at him and nodded, a fearsome gleam in her eyes. "During the Time War. The Time Lords destroyed the demons' planet. They were aligned with the Daleks. Blew it out of the sky. If only this lot had been there; the universe would be better without any of them."

"The Doctor's Companion, advocating genocide. How...delightfully appropriate." The five of them turned to the voice quickly, Dean and Sam raising their weapons without hesitation. A demon in the form of a young man stood to the side of the path, eyes black, grinning. "What would your precious Time Lord think to hear you talk that way, Rose Tyler?"

"If you've hurt him," Rose began, but the demon shook his finger at her, making a _tsk tsk_ sound.

"No threats," he said, "or we'll do worse than that. You want to see Crowley, I assume."

"Yeah, we do," Sam spat. "And we came with backup."

The demon studied Vastra and Jenny. "A Silurian and a human," he said. "That's just disgusting. What have you lowered yourself to, Silurian? Your people were once so proud."

"Says the demon _wearing_ a human," Vastra replied, her voice absolutely unruffled. Her hand around Jenny's waist tightened. "You hardly have room to judge me, creature. And as the boy says, you should let us through. With less lip. I have a subpoena from the Shadow Proclamation to secure your boss's arrest, should you fail to release the Doctor. And I don't think you want the Shadow Proclamation to find out what you're doing here."

The demon, still grinning, held his hands up placatingly. "No need for such _hostility_," he said. "Crowley sent me here to _escort_ you. Wouldn't want anybody wandering off. Getting lost around here isn't a smart thing to do. And from what we've gathered, Miss Tyler particularly is fond of wandering."

Rose bristled, but Sam put a hand on her shoulder. "He's trying to get you mad," he whispered. "Don't let him."

"They took that from the Doctor," she hissed. "They've been _in his head_. And if they've been in his head, that means he's hurt. His psychic defenses are too strong to let intruders in, if he's healthy."

"Then we'll figure that out once he's safe," Sam said. "Rose, calm down. For the Doctor's sake, you have to calm down."

"The boy's giving you good advice, Companion," the demon said. "You should keep a civil tongue in your head. Wouldn't want somebody to take it out."

"That's enough," Sam snapped. "If you're gonna take us to Crowley, then quit talking and start escorting."

The demon shook its head in an upwards direction, which Sam guessed was kind of the equivalent of rolling your eyes when your eyes were all one color. "Fine, so impatient, these mortals," he said. He stepped in front of Sam and Dean, who tensed and held their weapons leveled at him. He glanced at them, looking amused. "Let's go then, kids."

Reluctantly, Sam followed the demon, knowing the others would follow him. He kept the shotgun aimed at the demon's back. He startled the smallest amount when he heard Vastra's cool, dark voice behind them. "You should know that if anything should go wrong, I am venomous, and my venom _will_ incapacitate that body you're inhabiting. Kill it, if I decide to. And I am rather faster than a human, even a human with a parasite."

The demon turned back to sneer at her, but it looked a bit more subdued than before. "Noted," it said.

They walked in silence, the sulfur choking all of them, the occasional moan or scream or sound of weeping piercing the air. Sam saw Dean shudder once or twice, and his older brother kept his eyes firmly on the ground. Sam wanted to reach out to him, to touch his shoulder, but he knew it would be unwelcome. Dean didn't want to look weak, especially not in front of this demon, but not in front of Rose, Vastra, or Jenny, either. This could be dealt with at home, in some crappy motel, probably with the aid of lots of liquor. He wouldn't embarrass his brother.

"So, checking out the condo you've bought, Dean?" the demon asked conversationally. Sam stiffened, raising his gun a little higher, but Dean put a hand on his arm.

"Yeah," Dean replied, matching the demon's tone. "Figured I should come take a look. I hate buying blind, you know?"

A terrible shriek rent the silence that fell after Dean spoke, followed by crying that sounded like it came from the depths of a man's soul. The demon glanced back to see Dean's reaction. Dean had none except to say, "Gotta get some noise ordinances out here, man. That can't be good for property values."

The demon shook his head. "Such brave words from the little soldier," he said. "I suppose we'll see how brave you sound after your tongue is torn out."

"That's more than enough," Vastra snapped. "You will cease this insolence. We are here on official business from the Shadow Proclamation, and no matter what pocket dimension you hide yourselves in, your people signed the accord placing yourselves under our jurisdiction. I am a justice of the Shadow Proclamation, and these are my associates. _You_ would do well to keep a civil tongue in _your_ mouth, you parasitic worm."

The demon sighed, and said, "Fine, fine. We're here anyway."

What looked like a rock formation rose up to their left, and the demon led them around the corner. Crowley stood there, in his expensive black suit with a knife in his hand, next to a vertical table, onto which the Doctor was strapped.

The Doctor looked half-dead. His trenchcoat was abandoned on the floor, crumpled in an almost symbolic way. His white dress shirt was torn, his brown pinstriped pants shredded, his tie undone. Unnaturally dark blood ran down his face in rivers, streaming past lumps and terrible, purple and green bruises. His head drooped, his chin resting on his chest, and he didn't look up when Rose screamed his name.

"Justice Vastra," Crowley said pleasantly. "What a surprise."

"This is an abomination," Vastra said, her voice trembling with rage. "You had _no right—_"

"The Doctor gave himself to us willingly," Crowley interrupted. "Deal's a deal."

"I suppose it might be," Vastra said, "but I'm here to see that this deal is coming to an end. I have in my hand a subpoena for your appearance at the Shadow Proclamation, Crowley. You have two options. You can either accept the subpoena, or you can release the Doctor into Rose Tyler's care. Believe me, if a full investigation is started into your little operation here, it will not be pleasant for you."

Crowley laughed, and took a few steps towards Vastra. Jenny shied back, but Vastra stood her ground, sneering as Crowley grinned at her. "You think I'm afraid of your Shadow Proclamation?" he asked. "We've gone _thousands_ of years as we are, without so much as a peep from your precious peace-keeping committee. If you _really_ cared about what we were doing, or if you thought you could do anything about it, you'd have made it a point to stop us long ago."

"You underestimate us," Vastra said coolly.

"You underestimate _us_," Crowley returned. "Look around yourself, Vastra. This place is _full_ of human souls. You know what that means, or you should, at least. What could you do to us? Really?"

"We still have power," Vastra snapped. "We still have the loyalty of many races that survived the Time War. Unlike your people, as you'll recall."

Crowley spread his arms, as though to show himself off. "Look at me," he said. "I survived. And I'm not the only one. The bloody Time Lords did their best, Vastra. But they couldn't _exterminate_ us." He laughed as though he'd made a particularly clever joke. "And if they failed, what makes you think _you_ could succeed?"

Vastra looked like she was faltering. This wasn't going to happen. Not now. Not this time. Sam grabbed the Colt out of Dean's hands, ignoring his brother's shout of protest, and to everyone's shock he pressed the barrel against his head.

"Sam, what the hell!" Dean cried.

"Let the Doctor go," Sam said. "Or I'll shoot."

Crowley narrowed his eyes. "And why do I care if you kill yourself, boy?" he asked.

"Because you want Dean," Sam replied. "And I'm your..._collateral._ If I'm dead, Dean's got no reason not to find a way to break his deal."

Crowley stilled. "You won't kill yourself," he said.

"I'm living on borrowed time anyway," Sam said. He tightened his finger around the trigger. "Don't _underestimate_ me, Crowley."

Crowley held his hands up, a sickening, obsequious smile on his face. "Let's not be rash," he said. "I can be reasonable."

"Prove it," Sam spat. "Let the Doctor down. _Now_."

Keeping his hands up, Crowley walked over to the Doctor and undid his bonds. The Time Lord collapsed off the table, and Rose ran over to him. Crowley glared at Sam. "He's yours," he said. "But your brother is ours."

"Yeah, we'll see," Sam said. He pointed the Colt at Crowley, and glanced at Dean. "Help get him back to the TARDIS," he said. "I'll cover us."

"So dramatic," Crowley sighed. "We've gotten what we wanted from the bloody Gallifreyan. No one will stop you."

"You'll forgive me if I somehow don't trust you," Sam replied, and kept the pistol trained on Crowley as Dean carefully picked up the Doctor in a fireman's carry. Rose took his coat off the ground, holding it tight to her chest. Sam kept the gun on Crowley until they were around the rock, and kept an eye out until they got back into the TARDIS.

"The Zero Room," Sam said. "Get him there _now_."

He didn't know if it was somehow in the knowledge that the Doctor put in his head before—he didn't think it was—but he knew now that the Zero Room was built for just this kind of occasion. That the Doctor would heal faster in the Zero Room. And the TARDIS knew it was an emergency, because the room appeared as the first door to their left once they got into the hallway.

Dean laid the Doctor gently on the ground in the middle of the room, and as everyone stepped back, the Doctor began to levitate. As he floated gently in the air, his eyes fluttered open.

Rose gasped and took a step towards him, but his gaze fell on Jenny. His eyes widened, his chapped lips parted, and he murmured, "Susan?"

Jenny stared at the Doctor, frozen.

"My sweet Susan," the Doctor whispered. "My girl. Are you here to bring your old grandfather to rest?"

Vastra nudged Jenny, and she stepped forward, her hands trembling. "No, Do—"

"Grandfather," Rose whispered urgently. Jenny turned her deer-in-the-headlights gaze to the Companion. "Susan was his granddaughter. Call him Grandfather."

Jenny nodded, and walked up to the Doctor. "No, Grandfather. You're going to be all right."

The Doctor shook his head weakly. "Oh, Susan. I'm so sorry. I didn't want to."

"I know, Grandfather," Jenny said, sounding hesitant. "It's all right."

Sam was somewhat horrified and somewhat embarrassed to see a tear fall down the Doctor's face. He lifted a hand to brush Jenny's cheek. "No, my girl, it's not," he breathed. "Oh, my Susan, what I did to you. How can you forgive me?"

"You...you did what you had to do," Jenny stammered. "You did what was right."

"I so rarely do that," the Doctor said. "And now you're all gone. I've lost all of you. Such a terrible thing I did." The Doctor paused, and frowned. His face slowly slipped into a mask of fear. "Are you here...for what I did to the boy?"

Jenny stared at Rose, who shook her head helplessly. "What boy, Grandfather?" Jenny asked.

Another tear slipped down the Doctor's cheek. "Oh, Susan. The boy. The boy who trusted me. I did it to him. I always did. Everything I had him do led us back here. Susan, you would have liked him. So eager. And _brilliant_. He would have made such a Companion. But I destroyed him. It's all my fault. It's always _been_ my fault."

"Doc—Grandfather, I don't know what you're talking about," Jenny said, her voice rising in panic. Vastra made a hissing noise, and Jenny looked over to her. Vastra shook her head, and Jenny made a visible effort to calm down. "Grandfather, please. You should rest."

The Doctor shook his head, tiny, pained movements, now weeping openly. It was the worst thing Sam had ever seen. "No, no, Susan, there's no rest. I have to warn him. I did it to him. I did it, so now I can't stop it."

"Who is the boy, Grandfather?" Jenny asked desperately. "Maybe we can help him, if you tell me."

"Samuel," the Doctor gasped, and then cried out in pain before continuing: "John Winchester's boy, Samuel."

Everyone froze. Sam's heart stopped.

Jenny swallowed hard. "What do you mean, Grandfather?"

The Doctor grabbed weakly at Jenny's shirt, pulling her in closer. "It's the blood, Susan. It's always been the blood. It makes sense. The TARDIS. The visions. I should have seen it. I don't know if I could have stopped it, even if I understood, but I was so _blind_. Oh, Susan, I've done it again. I lost you, I lost your parents, I lost Romana, I lose everyone. I _hurt_ everyone. And now I've hurt this boy who did nothing wrong but to trust me." The Doctor's eyelids fluttered, and it looked like he was about to lose consciousness, but he mumbled wryly, "His brother will be _insufferable_ when he finds out."

And with that, the Doctor passed out.

The remaining, conscious inhabitants of the TARDIS stood still for a long moment, staring at the sleeping Time Lord. Dean was the first to break the silence. "Well, I gotta say that I don't like how that sounded," he said quietly.

"He's hardly in proper condition to believe what he says," Vastra said, but she sounded like she was barely convincing herself. "He's patently hallucinating."

"What did Susan look like?" Sam asked, feeling numb.

Rose shook her head. "I've only seen a few pictures of her, when the Doctor left them up on accident," she said. "She was...small. Dark haired. Young."

"Like Jenny," Sam said. He looked at Vastra. "He wasn't hallucinating. He's just confused."

"Confused," Vastra echoed. "Perhaps confused enough to think something happened to you while he was in Hell. There's no telling what the demons told him. He might think they killed you."

"He didn't say _kill_," Sam pressed. "He said _hurt_. And he said it was about the blood. It doesn't sound to me like he thinks the demons got me."

"What are you saying?" Rose asked, sounding defensive. "Do you think the Doctor _actually_ did something to you?"

"The first time I visited the TARDIS, he said there was something big going on, something he couldn't figure out," Sam said. "And whatever he's talking about now, it seems like he figured something out. Coincidences don't really happen, in my experience, so I'm going to assume it's connected."

Sam watched the Doctor as he hung suspended in the middle of the rose-scented room, fully unconscious. He saw the trails of dark blood drop onto the floor, running down his cheeks and fingertips. The man had obviously been tortured, maybe for a long time. They'd only been gone for a matter of hours, but the Doctor himself wasn't very good at precise landings; who knew how long it had been, for him, since they left him? The Doctor had suffered for them. It looked like he'd almost died for them. And Sam had trusted him, once. Trusted him with his life.

So why did that unconscious man suddenly feel like the most dangerous threat he'd ever come across?


	14. Chapter 14

Author's Note: Sorry about the delay! My laptop decided to give me trouble. This next section is going to be tough going, though, so it might be a little longer than usual before chapter 15 comes up, too. I'd love to hear your thoughts; reviews grease the creative wheels.

* * *

The Doctor wasn't waking up.

It had been half a day, and they'd all been sitting in the TARDIS, with Hell still outside, the scent of sulfur still lingering, thin and sick, in the air. Rose had tried everything she knew to wake him, but she couldn't. Vastra had tried, Jenny had tried, Dean had even tried yelling at him, but no one could wake him. He just lay there, floating a few feet off of the ground, his skin deathly pale and his breathing shallow. Not a twitch since he'd confessed to doing...whatever it was he'd done to Sam.

Sam had just found an elaborately well-stocked kitchen and gotten himself something to eat, having not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours prior. Dean had already found it, he was pretty sure, based on the fact that all of his brother's favorite burger condiments were left on the counter. At least he'd eaten. He'd been looking terrible since they got back onto the TARDIS, and Sam had seen his hands trembling. He was exhausted and probably not a little bit traumatized, and Sam was just glad he wasn't going to have to force him to eat.

Sam both felt and heard the hum of the TARDIS as he walked down the hall back to the Zero Room, and she felt _anxious_. He was sure it was the Doctor's condition that was upsetting her, throwing her off-balance. Every step he took drummed that nervous rhythm into his head. His own mind was filled with a background chant of _wake up wake up wake up_, and he wasn't sure if it was coming from him, or from the TARDIS.

The doors to the Zero Room opened in front of him as he put his hand on the wall, and he knocked twice to alert Rose to his presence. She looked over at him, and he saw the dark circles ringing her eyes. Her blonde hair fell in her face, and she didn't even bother to move it. "He's in a healing coma," she said, trying to sound cool and strictly informative, but Sam could hear that the worry in her voice was beginning to turn into panic. "He did this the last time he regenerated. I think it's normal."

"Rose, I don't know the coordinates for anywhere but here and the Shadow Proclamation, and I'm not sure I could fly her right now in the first place," Sam replied, trying his best to be patient. "If he doesn't wake up, we're stranded."

"He's going to wake up." Rose brushed a lock of wild brown hair away from the Doctor's eyes. Her own eyes shimmered with tears, and he saw her set her jaw against it. Her voice was firm and almost angry as she said, "He _will_."

Sam left her in the Zero Room with the Doctor, stepping outside to meet Dean. His brother was leaning against the wall in the hallway, arms crossed, eyes distant as though lost in thought. "Hey, man," Sam said quietly, mostly to let him know he was there.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean smiled at him, but it was halfhearted at best. "Doc's still sleeping?"

"Rose called it a coma, which doesn't thrill me," Sam said. "But she's pretty confident he'll wake up from it."

"Yeah, well, when?" Dean asked. "Because I'd like to spend some more time topside before my year is up."

That hurt. "Dean—"

"No, sorry. Didn't mean it like that." Dean ran a hand over his face, and slid down the wall until he was sitting. Sam sat next to him, and they sat like that for a moment, silent and comfortable. Just like when they were kids. Sam scooted over until their shoulders were touching. Since he was a baby that never failed to make him feel better. Dean's presence. The knowledge, the absolute _surety_ that Dean would never let anything bad happen to him. No matter how bad things got, and no matter what it cost him.

It took him a minute to realize he was crying.

It took Dean only a second longer. He turned and gripped Sam's arm, shaking his head. "No, dude, no. Come on. This is not gonna turn into a chick-flick moment. Come on, Sam." When Sam didn't stop (couldn't stop), Dean released his arm and put that hand behind Sam's back, pulling his brother into a hug. "Fine. You want chick-flick, you get chick-flick," Dean muttered.

Sam buried his face in the crook of his brother's neck, like he did when they were little. He felt Dean's palm trace soothing circles on his upper back. He remembered when that was the only thing that would get him to sleep. Of course, it had been years since he'd needed that kind of reassuring. Well. Two years. Not since he'd numbed to Jess's death.

"Hey, Sammy." Sam turned his head very slightly towards his brother's voice. "It's gonna be okay."

"Nope," Sam replied, his voice a choked laugh. "I doubt it, Dean. When has it ever all been okay?"

Dean was quiet for a moment, still tracing the circles on Sam's back. "You trust me?" he asked.

"You know it," Sam replied, not even having to think about it.

"Then trust me on this. It's gonna be okay. One way or another, it's gonna be okay." Dean pulled back, putting his hands on Sam's shoulders so that he had no choice but to face him. "You're gonna be okay."

"Not if you won't," Sam said unsteadily.

"I will be," Dean insisted. "I never faced anything I can't beat yet, Sammy. And that's luck that borders on stupid. Maybe I ought to test it a little less, but you know what? Lady Luck's never let me down so far. I'm gonna be fine."

"Dean, how can you _say_ that?" Sam asked. He willed his voice to not break. "We only have _weeks_ left to figure this out, and—"

"Only thing you need to figure out right now is how to wake up Marvin the Martian in there and get us back to Earth," Dean interrupted. He stood up and extended a hand to Sam. Sam glared at it for a moment, then gave in, took it, and stood. "Because seriously, whatever happens, I want to get in some more burgers, beer, and babes before I take a dirt nap."

"I'll do what I can," Sam replied, dry. He looked in the Zero Room, where Rose was sitting on the floor, watching the Doctor with weary eyes. "He took a beating, Dean. If he's in a healing coma, that might be the best thing for him right now."

"He just needs to wake up enough to get us home." Dean ran his hands through his hair and shrugged. "He can take a good long siesta after that if he wants. I just want to go home."

There was nothing to be said to that. Sam wanted to go home, too, to spend some time with his brother, to get back on the road, to try to figure out a way out of Dean's deal, if the Doctor couldn't do anything for him. But for that, they needed the Doctor awake. So Sam walked into the Zero Room.

Rose looked up as he did. She didn't smile like she usually did when she saw him. He knew she was too tired. They'd been back on the ship for almost fifteen hours, and she hadn't moved from the Doctor's side, hadn't slept, hadn't eaten. Kept vigil. Sam knew what that was like.

"He's not regenerating," she said quietly. "He'd've started by now, I think. He told me that the Zero Room can make that easier for him. I think he's just healing. But I can't help but think there's something wrong." She reached up and brushed her fingertips across the back of his hand. "I don't know what they did to him, Sam. They must have hurt him bad, for him to not have woken up yet." She touched the floor with her other hand. "Maybe there's something wrong with _her_. She should be helping him."

"What do you think could be wrong?" Sam asked. Rose shook her head helplessly, and Sam sighed in frustration. He walked around to the other side of the Doctor, glaring down at the unconscious alien as though if he _thought_ at him hard enough, maybe he would wake up. If he just _willed_ him to—

Sam gasped, the air harsh in his throat.

_Samuel, give it back_

_It'll only hurt you_

_I shouldn't_

_I'm sorry_

_Shouldn't have_

_The neural pathways were rerouted your basic DNA hasn't changed but your brain has been rewired by it new connections were made continue to be made faster than they should which is why you could accept it but you shouldn't have to it shouldn't be encouraged you need to purge it and I shouldn't have tried_

_I'm so sorry_

_I can't fix it_

_But I will make it up to you_

_Just give it back_

_Let me make it up to you_

Sam didn't react to Rose shaking him, didn't react to Dean shoving his shoulder to try to make him turn. He just stared at the Doctor. Give _what_ back? What did he want? What did he need?

He shook Dean and Rose off, and stepped up to the Doctor. Tentatively, his hands shaking, he laid the tips of his fingers on the Doctor's temples.

For a moment nothing happened.

And then it all came rushing out of him.

The knowledge the Doctor had given him. His connection to the TARDIS, at least the way he'd known how to fly her. The Doctor's words, his thoughts, his memories, everything he'd brought with him to the Shadow Proclamation, all felt like they rushed out of his brain, down his arms and back into the Doctor's mind. He felt electric. There was no pain, but he couldn't breathe, and it kept going, on and on, until he was sure he was going to pass out if it didn't stop soon—

Suddenly the current released him, and he stumbled backwards into Dean's arms, gasping for breath. He could hear his brother shouting at him, but it sounded like it was coming from a distance. He couldn't tear his eyes from the Doctor.

A long, unbearable moment dragged on where nothing happened. The Doctor hung in the air, still now, Dean supported Sam, Rose held her breath.

Then the Doctor opened his eyes.

He righted himself and stood, shaking his head vigorously as though to clear it from a dream, and rolled his shoulders back. "Ah!" he shouted, shaking the rest of his body, one gangly limb at a time. "Brilliant! Knew you'd figure it out, Samuel, just needed a little push, that's all. My Rose, sorry you had to play nursemaid again. Seems I'm always slipping into comas on you, doesn't it? And Dean, brave show out there, just fantastic. Now! Seems like we have an Earth to get back to, doesn't it? It's all right, old girl, right as rain. Let's see about going home." The Doctor pulled his overcoat from a stunned Rose's grip, shrugged it on, and strode out briskly into the control room.

All this as though nothing had happened.

Well, almost. Sam would have thought that the Doctor had maybe forgotten everything that happened—it would make sense, in a way, after all. Maybe the alien's brain had blocked it out, as a way to deal with whatever it was he had experienced in Hell. Maybe he had some defense mechanisms to protect him from the trauma. Maybe that was part of what Sam gave back to him.

But for just a moment, when he'd looked at Sam, Sam had seen a bleakness in his eyes. A depth that he would have called _deadness_, if there hadn't been such a screaming grief hidden there.

He couldn't fool Sam. Sam was a past master at ferreting out what was wrong with people, particularly people who didn't want to talk about it. It was more or less Sam's lot in life.

After a shocked moment, Rose and the Winchesters followed the Doctor into the control room. He was staring at the console, his thick glasses perched on his nose, frowning deeply. "Who else is on board?" he asked, without even turning around. "We have two more passengers. Did you know we have two more passengers?"

"They helped us get you out, Doctor," Rose said. "But you...don't know them. Yet. We need to take them back to the Shadow Proclamation. It's a long story, just trust me."

The Doctor turned around, staring at Rose through narrowed eyes. "What do you mean, I don't know them yet?" he asked.

Rose shook her head. "Doctor, don't ask me. Apparently this is your doing."

"It is most certainly _not_."

"It most certainly _is_, and I need you to trust me. Bring us back to the coordinates you gave Sam. Doctor, for once, don't argue with me."

Sam could tell the Doctor wanted nothing more than to do exactly that. But he knew the Time Lord heard the same thing in Rose's voice that he did: the bone-weariness, the aching sadness, and the slightest tinge of fear. So the Doctor licked his lips, contemplating for a moment, and then nodded. Silently, he turned back to the console and set about inputting the coordinates.

Sam kept his eyes on the Doctor, but he could feel Dean turn to him, feel his brother's anxious eyes on him, and he was pretty sure he was the only one who could hear him whisper, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he whispered back. "He just took back what he gave me to get us to the Shadow Proclamation. I'm back to normal."

"Well there's the first good news today," Dean muttered. Sam knew he was glaring at the Doctor. "How long are we gonna keep up this everything-is-kittens-and-rainbows act?"

"Until we get our guests back to the Shadow Proclamation, and the two of you back to Earth," the Doctor replied shortly. Dean startled, but didn't back down.

"Are we really not going to talk about what you said?" he demanded. "You said you did something to Sam. I want to know what."

"Sam is exactly as I found him," the Doctor said through tight lips. "We can discuss this further once I've gotten you home."

"We can discuss this _now_," Dean shouted.

"No, we cannot!" The Doctor whirled around, and Sam found himself taking a step back. The look on the Time Lord's face was one he'd never seen before, a look of absolute fury. Dean stood his ground but Sam saw that he was unpleasantly surprised by the show of anger. The Doctor gripped the console, white-knuckled, and looked away, collecting himself. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'm not myself, just now. But please. I need to get everyone home. I promise, I will do my best to explain, once we're all safe. Can you trust—no. Can you wait until then, Dean?"

Sam looked at his brother, eyes wide, willing him to, _for once_, just be cool. Just this once. Just so they could get home. He saw the various emotions flicker across his brother's open-book face: anger, fear, confusion, protectiveness, defiance, anxiety.

Dean ran a hand over his face, shaking his head. "Yeah, Doctor," he said, finally. "Sure. We'll talk about it then."

The Doctor stood there for a moment, at the console, staring at Dean. Something about that stance looked vulnerable and childlike, something about the surprise in his face that Dean had let it go. Like a kid who'd escaped a talking-to. Like Dean's face used to look when their dad would just go to bed instead of yelling at him about something that happened on a hunt. The Doctor nodded his head, released a breath, and said, "Thank you." He turned, the hem of his overcoat flaring slightly, and finished inputting the coordinates.

He didn't have to tell anyone to hold on, this time. All three of the humans did it as soon as he approached the last lever.

The TARDIS was quiet as they tipped and pitched, seeming almost subdued. Sam found himself missing his connection to her. He couldn't hear her sing, not anymore. He could still feel the low rumble of her heart in the rail that he gripped, but her voice was gone now. So, like with the chanting before, he couldn't tell if the sadness he felt was hers or his.

When they landed, Rose walked off to find Vastra and Jenny, who had gone to one of the TARDIS's many rooms to wait until they returned to the Shadow Proclamation. Dean sat down heavily on the ground, and Sam followed suit, watching the Doctor.

When Rose came back with the others, the Doctor watched them warily. Jenny avoided his eye, and Vastra seemed to ignore him until she got all the way to the door. Then she stopped with her hand raised as though to open it, and she turned around. "When we finally meet, Doctor," she said, "please remember that you aren't wrong in giving Vastra a chance. I will return the favor."

The Doctor said nothing. Vastra gave a slight bow. The Doctor returned it as the barest inclination of his head, and Vastra ushered Jenny outside, into the bright white of the Shadow Proclamation.

Rose closed the door behind them and walked up to the console with the Doctor. "All right. What was that all about? A Silurian and a human? Were they together? Who are they? How do they know me? How do _you_ know _them_?" he asked, his brow furrowed.

"I'll explain everything that I think I can later," Rose promised. "I need to figure out how much of it I can tell you."

The Doctor's expression became put-out. "Well I can't say I like the way _that_ sounds," he said. Rose raised an eyebrow.

"Now you know how I feel," she retorted. "Now are you bringing us back to Earth or no?"

"Course I am," the Doctor grumbled, fiddling with some knobs grumpily. "What, do you want to drive?"

Rose put her hands in the air, shaking her head. "All right, all right," she said. "I get it. No backseat pilots."

She backed off, and the Doctor walked around the console, setting the coordinates. But Sam noticed that he was slower in doing it this time. It could well have been that he was just tired, exhausted from his ordeal and the healing he'd just forced his body to undergo. That couldn't be an easy process. Still, Sam got the distinct feeling that he was _stalling_. He didn't want to get back to Earth. He didn't want to talk to them about what he'd said.

It was not a reassuring thought.

_It's the blood, Susan. It's always been the blood_, he'd said._ It makes sense. The TARDIS. The visions._

Whatever it was he thought he'd done to Sam had something to do with his visions. But that was impossible. Ingesting Azazel's blood when he was an infant had given him the visions.

The Doctor had said, back at the Cygnus Loop, that he was sure that Sam's visions were connected to why the TARDIS was translating for him. _It's the blood_. Was Azazel's blood somehow the reason that the TARDIS could access his mind to translate?

But why would that be the Doctor's fault? He'd said _I did it to him_. Obviously the Doctor hadn't been responsible for Azazel. His sympathy for their dad's death had been too real, his surprise at the fact that he was dead too genuine, and if Sam had learned anything about the Doctor, it was that when it came to his emotions he was like Dean: all on the surface. Besides, he'd first met them when they were in their teens. And the way the demons had treated him in Hell certainly didn't seem like the way they'd treat an ally. Sam didn't have a whole lot of faith in demons' goodwill, but he did believe in their sense of self-preservation, and torturing an ally as powerful as the Doctor just seemed like a massively stupid move, even for them.

So if the Doctor wasn't in league with Azazel, how could what happened to Sam be his fault?

More alarmingly, what could he _think_ he'd done to Sam that would warrant the kind of guilt he'd expressed before he fell into his coma? What could a man who'd killed his entire race possibly feel that guilty about, if his guilt at the genocide hadn't destroyed him?

"We're here."

Sam looked up at the Doctor's voice and realized he hadn't even noticed the TARDIS moving on their trip back to Earth. He looked over at Dean, and sure enough, his brother was the smallest bit green around the gills. "Havin' some deep thoughts, Jack Handey?" Dean asked, his attempt at levity somewhat flattened by the furrow of his brows.

"Yeah, it's nothing," Sam replied dismissively. "I'm fine." He stood up and helped Dean to his feet.

The Doctor examined the read-outs on the TARDIS's screens, and nodded, satisfied. "We're back at your friend's salvage yard, about twenty minutes after we left from the hospital," he said. "He'll probably be surprised to see you're back so soon."

"Nice landing," Sam said, unable, despite the circumstances, to keep the smile off of his face.

That levity was not reflected in the Doctor expression. He didn't meet Sam's eyes. "I owe you that, at least," he said, quietly. "I have no doubt you want off of the TARDIS as soon as possible, Dean, so I suppose we can have this conversation outside as easily as in here."

"Thank God," Dean breathed, then hesitated, putting his hand on the rail of the ramp. "No offense, darlin'. But thank God."

Dean led them out of the TARDIS, walking quickly outside and taking in a lungful of fresh South Dakota air. He tilted his head up towards the mid-day sky and smiled broadly. Sam couldn't help smiling at the sight of him. It was good to see his brother happy, even if it was only because they wouldn't be flying anymore. Even if it was temporary.

He glanced behind him as the Doctor approached, also watching Dean, his hands in his pockets. "Hey," Sam said quietly. The Doctor didn't turn. "Whatever happened, whatever you think you did, we'll figure it out."

The Doctor took a long breath, and released it slowly. He shook his head. "Your faith in me is touching, Samuel," he said. "It's as touching as it is undeserved."

"I'm fine," Sam insisted. "Whatever the demons made you believe you did to me, you didn't. Nothing happened to me at the Shadow Proclamation. Nothing happened since we last saw each other."

"I know," the Doctor replied. "It happened a long time ago."

"Doctor, you aren't making any sense," Sam said, frustrated. "There's nothing you could have done to me. There isn't."

The Doctor didn't respond to that, but rolled his shoulders back. "Dean, Rose," he called, and they turned to him. "We ought to find somewhere to sit and talk."

He finally looked at Sam, and the look of apology in his eyes was frightening. "I have a lot of explaining to do."


	15. Chapter 15

Author's Note: And the mysteries are revealed.  
There's probably one more chapter left in this adventure, but I've already got a one-shot written in this same universe. I feel like there are lots more stories ahead of the Doctor and the boys, and I'll see if I can't find a couple more to tell. Review or PM and let me know what your thoughts are on whether I should continue in this universe.

Also. I have "FANS"? I think I'm going to faint.

* * *

Nobody wanted to start the conversation.

Dean, who'd been so gung-ho to talk about it on the TARDIS, was the first one to delay it by freaking out about leaving the Impala at the hospital in Rock Rapids. Obviously nothing was going to happen to the car, and obviously there were easy solutions such as Sam driving Dean back to the hospital and Dean driving the Impala back to Bobby's, but calming him about "abandoning his baby" down took about ten minutes.

Bobby, the only one who _wasn't_ trying to avoid the conversation, was the next delay, as he came bursting out of his house, guns blazing, when he heard the sound of the TARDIS. Convincing him not to shoot the Doctor took just under five minutes; catching him up to speed took fifteen.

Once they were in the house, Rose bustled about the kitchen making tea for everyone, once Bobby found the Mesozoic-era box of Lipton hidden in the back of a cabinet. Dean insisted on coffee and made that while Rose was boiling water. Ten minutes, total, for the beverages.

The Doctor had popped into Bobby's study and found an amulet, the origin of which he and Bobby proceeded to argue about for another ten minutes. Bobby swore it was Etruscan; the Doctor maintained that it was from Therabenas, a planet in a solar system more in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Bobby harrumphed about it for a bit but Sam could tell that he was secretly a little impressed.

The whole time, Sam sat at the table with his cup of hot, probably expired tea sitting in front of him, growing less hot but no less expired. He watched his brother, his foster-father, the Doctor, and Rose as they buzzed around like anxious bees, doing their best to not talk about anything important. He just sat.

After all, he was the one they were going to talk about. It wasn't like he could make whatever had happened to him not have happened by twittering about an amulet like they were all on _Antiques Roadshow_.

A hush fell over the room, gradually, like a blanket being lowered. Dean's low, forced chuckle at some remark Bobby had made was the last sound to die out. The Doctor's gaze fell on Sam, and he lowered his eyes, taking a long, deep breath.

"I suppose we can't evade it forever," he said quietly. He walked up to the table and held out a chair for Rose, who took it silently. He sat, and Bobby and Dean took their seats, as well.

The Doctor placed his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, his expression pensive and reluctant. "I've said this before to you, Sam, but I need to repeat it for Dean and Robert," he said. Sam nodded his assent, and the Doctor met Dean's eyes. "As I told you, I'm a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey. My people have had access to time travel technology for...well, sort of forever. It gets complicated. But what's important is that my people were responsible for the protection of time itself."

Dean sat back, frowning. "What exactly does _that_ mean?"

The Doctor sighed and sat back as well, biting his lip and wrinkling his brow. "Time isn't...as linear as you'd imagine," he said slowly. "You probably think of it as a strict progression from cause to effect, right?"

"Yeah," Dean said skeptically, "that's more or less what I think. I guess."

"That's wrong," the Doctor said plainly. "Time can be rewritten. It can be manipulated. Just because something's happened doesn't mean that it's always happened."

"Oh, well, of course," Dean muttered.

The Doctor glared at him, and said, "The best example is the Time War."

"Doctor—" Rose began, but the Doctor raised a hand to cut her off.

"I fought in it. During the War—"

"Vastra told us what happened," Sam interrupted. The Doctor looked startled. "You don't...have to say it again, if you don't want to."

The Doctor nodded hesitantly, and sighed. "Thank you, Samuel. But the point is, the War took place over all points of time, and yet none of it happened. I put it behind a Time Lock, and it's a point that never existed. _And yet_, despite the fact that my home never was, not according to the way time panned out, I still exist. How is that possible?"

It took Dean, Sam, and Bobby a moment to realize it was not a rhetorical question. "Um, it isn't?" Dean guessed.

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Precisely. If time is linear, it's impossible for me to be from a planet that never existed. But if you look at time from a _non_-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's much more elaborate, much more complicated. You can't think of time as two-dimensional. It is, itself, a fourth dimension of perception."

"So we can chuck cause-and-effect," Bobby said.

The Doctor tilted his head, considering. "Well, sort of. In a strict, overarching sense, yes. In a day-to-day sense, no, if you drop a cup it will still probably fall to the floor. But take Samuel for instance. Each time Samuel has a vision, he is traveling in that fourth dimension to have an experience in a time he has not yet visited."

"Wait, _what_?" Dean exclaimed, and Sam shushed him.

"When I told him that," the Doctor continued, as if Dean hadn't said anything, "his response was, but sometimes we can change it. _Yes_. Sometimes you _can_ change it. Time is mutable. Just like if you're walking in a straight line down a road and you see a fallen tree, you can walk around it or climb over it, you can create an alternate timeline by changing a piece of what happens. You can't _always_ do this, because of fixed points, but often, you can change at least _something_."

Some of the enthusiasm faded from the Doctor's face as he added, "It's changing that something that can be the problem." He took a deep breath. "Samuel, tell me why you had visions."

Sam stilled, and said, "Um. When I, ah, was a baby, the Yellow-Eyed—that is, Azazel came into my nursery and bled into my mouth. It was the demon blood that was in my system that gave me the visions."

"And why would that give you visions, Samuel?" the Doctor asked.

Sam stared at him. "What?"

"I said, _why_ would having ingested demon blood as an infant give you precognition?" the Doctor pressed. "What sense does that make?"

"Not a lot," Sam admitted, "but we've never really, you know, tested the logic of the things demons do. I mean, until like this week we assumed they were...spiritual. What are you saying?"

The Doctor leaned over the table, just a bit, and met Sam's eyes with a directness and intensity that he hadn't shown since Sam's first visit to the TARDIS. Sam had to make an effort to keep from shrinking back. "I'm saying that demons are semi-corporeal extraterrestrial beings with intergalactic travel capabilities. They are able to fabricate and maintain a pocket dimension in locational synch with your planet, if not temporal synch. But what they are _not_ is capable of time manipulation as a function of their biology. Demon blood has no properties that would give a human the ability to disengage from their linear timeline."

Sam realized he was shaking his head, and said, "Then what?"

The Doctor said nothing.

Sam bit back a growl of frustration. "Doctor, I'm not understanding. If it wasn't Azazel's blood, what was it?"

"_Demons_ aren't biologically suited to time manipulation," the Doctor said quietly. "Others are."

Sam stared at him.

Dean said, "Doc, you aren't saying that—"

"That's not possible," Sam whispered. "I know it was Azazel. I _know_ it. He killed my mom and ruined my life. My dad spent the rest of his days tracking him down. Azazel did this to me. _Not_ you."

"You're not wrong," the Doctor replied. "Not entirely. Azazel was the one in your nursery. He was the one who killed your mother. But that wouldn't have been enough."

The Doctor shrugged off his overcoat, and his suit coat, and unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt. Sam couldn't take his eyes off of him. The Time Lord rolled up his sleeve to his elbow, and laid his forearm on the table so that everyone could see.

A ropy red scar made its way from his wrist all the way up to his elbow, puckered and red and brutal. It looked like it had been opened again and again as it tried to heal. The Doctor looked down at it with equanimity, as though it didn't hold what had to be countless terrible memories.

Rose reached a trembling hand out and touched it gently. "Doctor," she breathed.

"Demons can't travel through time," the Doctor said. "But they have allies who can. They brought me back to 1983. Bled me."

Sam couldn't move.

"Azazel drank some of _my_ blood, to pass on to you. The powers they wanted you to have...they couldn't have given them to you on their own. They needed a Time Lord. If I hadn't been there, their plan would have failed. They would never have been able to do what they did to you."

"Not all of us had visions," Sam said.

"Not all of you were given my blood," the Doctor replied. "I wasn't the only one they took. But Samuel, if they hadn't taken me, this wouldn't have happened to _you_. Your whole life...your parents...if I had just left the two of you alone, it wouldn't have happened. If I hadn't been fooled by the Shadow Proclamation call, they would never have lured me into Hell, and they could never have gotten my blood to give to you." The Doctor lowered his eyes, looking spent. "I'm so sorry, Samuel."

"You're sorry?"

Sam heard himself say it almost before he realized he was going to. The Doctor looked up, confused. He saw Dean and Rose and Bobby all turn to him, but he didn't care. "Are you saying you're _sorry_ for what happened?"

"Yes," the Doctor said hesitantly. "Of course I am, Samuel. If I could go back—"

"Then you, what, wouldn't let yourself be tortured?" Sam asked. "You wouldn't do what you thought was sacrificing yourself for our safety? You wouldn't agree to be taken down to Hell so that we could escape to the Shadow Proclamation? You wouldn't take that bullet for us? Which part are you sorry for?"

The Doctor frowned. "No, Samuel. I'm sorry because I am the reason your life turned out the way it did. I was the lynchpin of their plan for you. I'm the _reason_ you and Dean grew up without a mother, on the road, chasing after monsters with your father."

"You heard Crowley," Sam said. "The call that the Shadow Architect sent out when she was possessed was real. If you hadn't found us, somebody else would have. And they would have put us in...in—"

"Space prison," Dean supplied.

"—space prison for the rest of our lives," Sam finished, nodding his thanks to Dean, who grinned. "You saved us."

"From something I created," the Doctor argued.

"No," Sam said. "You don't get to turn yourself into the bad guy when you're a victim. If you'd held me down when I was six months old, bled into my mouth to turn me into some freak, and killed my mom, then okay, you could claim villain status. But when what you did was turn yourself over to demons, leave us with your time machine and a way to escape, and get yourself tortured, then no. You don't get to call yourself the bad guy when all you did was get tortured for twenty-four years."

"Right," the Doctor said softly. "Twenty-four years."

"But that's how I could hear the TARDIS, right?" Sam asked. "Because I have Time Lord blood in me?"

The Doctor looked up, his eyes haunted for a moment, then shook his head to clear it. "Well, no, not precisely," he said. "You _had_ Time Lord blood in your system more than two decades ago. Obviously, you don't now, not anymore. But what it did was rewire your brain."

"That's what you said to me when you were in the coma," Sam said. "That the blood had rerouted my neural pathways."

"Time Lords and humans are biologically relatively similar," the Doctor explained, "but some of the chemicals in our bloodstream can have effects on a human's physiology, such as promoting the generation of neuron connections in the brain. Basically my blood rewired you so that you would be more sensitive to the fourth dimension and able to unfix yourself from your timeline, and that bit of Time Lord biology connects you to the TARDIS. Not to the extent that you were when I sent you to the Shadow Proclamation, not all the time, but you are _always_ more sensitive to her than the average human would be."

The Doctor ran his fingers along the thick scar on his arm, and a pained expression came over his face. He looked up at Sam. "You don't have to pretend," he said quietly. "That you don't hate me. I won't blame you."

Sam didn't say anything for a moment, but studied the Time Lord. His shoulders were slumped, his fingers brushing over the scar, and as soon as he was finished speaking his eyes drifted down to the table. The guilt weighed heavily on him. And for a moment, Sam saw his brother instead of the alien. He _understood_ the Doctor.

He saw the unbearable burden he put on himself. Just as Dean had decided that it was his responsibility to keep Sam safe under any and all circumstances, the Doctor had decided that it was his responsibility to keep any and every person he came across safe, and that any failure to do so, regardless of what actually happened, was his fault. It wasn't even that the Doctor thought it was really on him that Azazel had chosen Sam, had destroyed his family and his life. It was that the Doctor couldn't keep Sam safe; that Sam was a person in the Doctor's life, and Sam had gotten hurt.

"Okay," Sam said. The Doctor looked up. "Sure, okay. I'll hate you."

"Sam," Rose said softly.

"And I'll hate my mom, while I'm at it. I mean, she did abandon me. What right did she have to go and die?" Sam pressed on. "And my dad. If he'd been protecting me like he was supposed to, Azazel couldn't have gotten into my nursery in the first place. The security company that my parents used. Why couldn't they have figured out a way to secure our home against demons? And Dean, too."

"What? Why?" Dean asked, startled.

Sam shrugged. "Why not? I'm apparently just hating people."

"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor snapped.

"I'm not," Sam said. "Losing battles is part of the job, Doctor, and you ought to know that better than any of us. We can let guilt take over our lives or we can deal with it and move on. Sure, maybe you had a part in screwing me over. But it wasn't your _idea_, and you didn't do it on purpose, and you're sorry for it. And you know what? I'm willing to accept your apology and be done with it. Because you saved my life and my brother's life. From what Rose tells us, you've saved this planet more times than you can probably count. So if Azazel tortured you to get the tools to hurt me, then I'll just have to put that behind me. The question is, can _you_?"

The Doctor's eyes slipped gradually from Sam's, as though he couldn't bear to make eye contact any longer. He rubbed his scar absently, and his face cycled through emotions as he processed Sam's words. Finally, he said, his voice barely audible, "I don't know."

Sam sat back in his chair. "I get that," he said after a moment. "I do. But you can't ask me to hate you. If you feel guilty...join the club. And in the mean time, we deal with it."

A small, sad smile played at the corners of the Doctor's lips. His brow furrowed in thought, and he sighed. "It's odd," he remarked.

Sam looked at Dean, who shrugged. "What's odd, Doctor?" Sam asked cautiously.

The Doctor carefully unfolded his sleeve, buttoning the cuff back up. He then stood, pulling his suit coat back on and buttoning it in turn. He looked down at the buttons of his coat, and, without looking up, he said, "Nine hundred years. That's how long I've been wandering, more or less. Nine hundred years with all of time and space before me. And you are twenty four. Never left America before this week, that you can recall. And yet you've learned that lesson already, when I...haven't been able to." He finally looked up, and some of the darkness, the desperate anger and sadness, was gone from his eyes. "It's the magnificent thing about the universe, Samuel. Always more to learn. Always another person to meet to teach you."

Sam returned the smile that the Doctor gave him, and because of that smile, he couldn't help but feel a little ill by the one phrase in that compliment that hooked him like a barb. _Never left America before this week, that you can recall._

How had he almost forgotten?

Sam stood up and left the table, leaving four stunned faces behind him as he walked into Bobby's study. He shuffled some papers on the desk before he found it, but there it was. He'd counted on the fact that in Dean's eagerness to go after the demons in Rock Rapids, he would have forgotten it. And sure enough, he knew his brother.

He walked back into the kitchen with his father's journal in his hands, and the Doctor's face shifted from confusion to neutral acceptance in an instant. "Ah," was all he said, his eyes following the journal as Sam laid it on the table and opened it.

His father's thin, square handwriting filled the page in front of him, and he laid his finger beneath the entry on the Shadow Proclamation.

_DON'T Trust the Doctor._

Sam slid the journal to the Doctor, his finger marking the place on the page. The Doctor read it silently. "I just have to know," Sam said. "Just...what happened, why he wouldn't trust you. When you _literally_ went to Hell and back for us, why our dad wouldn't trust you."

The Doctor rested his fingers on the page, just under his own name. He chuckled dryly. "Bit stark, seeing it in black and white like that," he murmured. He shook his head. "I knew he was angry with me. Didn't realize he'd paint me like that, though."

"What happened?" Sam pressed.

"It's like Ellen said," the Doctor sighed. "Twelve years ago there was a warrant out for your father and Bill Harvelle. Apparently one or both of them were involved in the murder of a Blowfish."

"A what now?" Dean asked, and Sam could tell that he was barely keeping the laughter out of his voice.

The Doctor gave him a withering glance. "A Blowfish. In human parlance," he replied coolly. "They've been on and off Earth for decades, usually harmless except in normal, human ways. Running crime rings, involving themselves in drug deals, larceny. I don't know what the circumstances were. Strangely, your father wasn't terribly forthcoming."

Bobby snorted.

"It happened last time somewhat like this time. I found them, offered to be their counsel at the Shadow Proclamation, and took them up myself. Only thing was, Ellen wouldn't let Bill go without her. And without Ellen to stay and take care of the three of you, they had me bring the whole lot of you up to the Shadow Proclamation." A look that Sam could only think to describe as _nostalgic exasperation_ crossed the Doctor's face. "Since you don't remember, you can't _imagine_ the trouble it was to keep the three of you from causing an intergalactic incident up there. And I thought you, Samuel, were going to nail your feet to the floor of the library when it was time to go."

"Sounds about right," Dean said with a smirk.

"We were able to get the Shadow Proclamation to understand their circumstances," the Doctor continued. "The justice was an old friend of mine. So they were exonerated and let off with a warning: no interference in non-human affairs unless there were human lives immediately at risk in a way that the police would not be able to handle."

"So no ganking aliens for pyramid schemes," Dean translated.

The Doctor's mouth twitched as he fought a smile. "Precisely." He sobered quickly, though, and said, "It was...evidently difficult for them to distinguish what they were and were not allowed to hunt, though. Or they didn't like being told what to do, I don't know. Regardless, one of the Blowfish's relatives came after them. Like I said, mostly harmless, barely above average human strength, no notable powers. But they are _distinctly_ non-human."

The Doctor paused. Sam asked, "Who shot it?"

That surprised the alien. He let out a single, hollow laugh. "Bill. And then the Judoon shot him for violating his parole, as it were. I arrived just too late to stop it. Your father saw me, saw the Judoon, and assumed, I suppose, that I was involved with them. He left before I could tell him differently."

"So he and Ellen blamed you for Bill's death," Sam said.

The Doctor nodded. "I don't know what was going through your father's head. I can't imagine that he was in a good state...keeping the whole thing from the two of you, him and Ellen and Bill being the only ones to remember what happened. Maybe he thought I'd betrayed him. Maybe he thought the whole thing was a scheme to murder Bill, and then him." He shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I just don't."

Sam slid the journal back over to himself. He startled when Dean took it and closed it, wrapping the leather strap around it. "I don't think anybody ever accused Dad of always making the right call," he said. "This time, he didn't."

Sam wondered if the Doctor understood what it meant for Dean to have said that.

"Your father," the Doctor said, firmly, "was a great man."

"Yes, he was," Dean agreed.

"Brave. Braver than I've seen, before or since. He did his best by the two of you. And I have to tell you...your father reminded me, in my darkest days, why it is we don't give up."

The Doctor took an unsteady breath, and stood up. He looked to Rose, who joined him. "Well. We ought to be off," he said. "We've taken enough of your time and hospitality. I can only hope—"

"Stay a spell, Doctor," Bobby said, standing as well. The Doctor watched him, frowning. "Come on, son, you look like crap. I wouldn't let the boys on the road looking like you do; think I'm gonna let you pilot a space-and-time ship? You got another think coming."

The Doctor looked startled. Rose's lips were pressed together tight to keep from laughing.

"We got an extra bedroom," Bobby continued, "and if you got all of space and time ahead of you, one night in South Dakota shouldn't make much difference, one way or another." He paused, but before the Doctor could say anything, he added, "You saved my boys, Doctor. Let me give you room and board for a night. Let me do that much."

The Doctor opened his mouth, but Rose put a finger over it. He stared down at her, as she said, "We'd be happy to, Mr. Singer. We could use a rest."

The Doctor frowned grumpily, but Sam could see it in his eyes. He was glad for Rose's intervention.

And Sam was glad, in his turn, for another day to spend with the two of them.


	16. Chapter 16

Author's Note: Short-ish little story capper, wherein one last loose end gets tied up, future plot points are tied in, and the ground is left open for sequels. Thank you so much to everybody who supported this story and me in writing it, and I'm really honored by the reaction I've gotten to it. I'm glad I could write something you enjoyed, and I hope you stick around for the further adventures of the boys, the Doctor, and his various Companions. This story continues in "What Power"!

* * *

Sam rose with the sun the next morning, feeling more rested than he had in what seemed like years. What probably had been years. Even though he'd slept on the couch, leaving the bedroom for the Doctor (despite the Doctor's protests), he felt good.

He swung his legs off the couch and stood, stretching, twisting out the couple of knots in his back. Coffee. He was rested, sure, but coffee was about more than caffeine. It was _tradition_.

He shrugged on an unbuttoned overshirt and walked into the kitchen, his eyes still bleary with sleep. It took him a minute to realize the Doctor was already there.

"Morning, Samuel," the Doctor said with a smile. He was sitting at the table, looking out the window across the salvage yard. A beautiful sunrise was fading on the horizon. "Lovely day, I think. I ought to visit South Dakota more often. It's apparently beautiful. Who knew?"

"Morning, Doctor," Sam replied, grinning in return. He walked over to the coffee maker and dumped the old grounds. "Do you drink coffee?"

"On occasion," the Doctor said. "But I think that a morning like this, in a place like this, requires some. Just not picturesque enough without it."

Sam laughed softly as he measured out the fresh coffee (fresh being a relative term at Bobby's house) and poured the water into the machine. He hit the button, and inhaled deeply as the hot water hit the grounds and filled the kitchen with the scent of coffee. It was the scent of morning. Every morning. His dad had loved his coffee in the morning, and so, of course, did Dean. It had been a hard-earned acquired taste for Sam, but to fit in he'd learned to like it.

Bobby's machine was reliable but not fast, so Sam settled down at the table across from the Doctor to wait for the coffee to brew. "You slept all right?" he asked.

The Doctor looked up, momentarily puzzled by the mundanity of the question, but nodded. "Yes. Just fine. Rose, too—she's still asleep up there. Lazy thing." He shook his head fondly. "Grew up and lived with a time machine and I'd never dream of wasting a day by sleeping past six."

"I guess us humans take it where we can get it," Sam replied. He looked at the Doctor, and added, "You know, she didn't leave your side. Not until you woke up."

The Doctor didn't respond for a moment, leaning back in his chair and gazing at the last vestiges of the sunrise. "She's remarkable," he said, finally. "She's..." He trailed off.

"You know," said Sam, "the way you look at her? It's what convinced me that you weren't a demon. Or at least what kept me questioning."

The Doctor tilted his head. "Really?"

Sam nodded. "Demons don't...care about humans. You care about Rose. It's beyond obvious."

The Doctor smiled softly, a sadness behind the expression. "Yes," he said. "I care about her. She's brilliant." He blinked, and the sadness faded. "Well, I'm certainly glad that you eventually believed I'm not a demon."

"I'm glad you're not," Sam said. "Means I'm not, either."

The Doctor arched an eyebrow. "You're not a Time Lord, either, Samuel," he said, admonishing. "It would take more than a little rewiring of your neural connections to make you...anything but human."

"I don't think I'm exactly human," Sam muttered. "Little on the freaky side of human."

The Doctor leaned on the table, studying him. "What do you think _human_ is, Samuel?" he asked. "A genome? A pattern that your brains are cut out of? An unadulterated bloodstream?"

Sam didn't say anything.

"Is your brother human?" the Doctor pressed.

"Yeah," Sam replied without hesitation. "Yeah, Dean is definitely human."

"There are no more Time Lords," the Doctor said. "Only me. Do you know why? Not because no one shares my DNA. Because no one shares my childhood. My experiences. My upbringing, my culture, my life. If your brother is human, then you're human, Samuel. Because I have _never_ seen two people so alike in my life."

Sam had to laugh, because he knew that it was true. Little as he sometimes wanted to admit it, you couldn't spend as much time with another person as he had with Dean and not have some things in common. He liked to think that there were certain differences—that he had, for example, better taste in women and music than his brother—but he knew that, particularly to outsiders, they were far more alike than they were different.

"Okay," Sam said. "I'll accept that. But I meant to ask you, before, but we were. You know."

"Busy," the Doctor supplied.

"Yeah," Sam said. "But when we were at the Shadow Proclamation, I, ah, when you'd given me that knowledge, I got...confused."

The Doctor stilled in that way that meant that Sam had surprised him. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Sam bit his lip, and glanced over to the coffee maker. It was done brewing, so he stood up and went to fix his coffee. He didn't look back at the Doctor as he asked, "How do you like yours?"

"Samuel," the Doctor said, his voice low, "what do you mean, _confused_?"

Sam opened the cabinet and pulled two mugs down, pouring the coffee carefully into both. "There's milk in the fridge if you want some," he said.

"Samuel."

Sam took his hands off of the mugs. "At the Shadow Proclamation. I was looking at Rose and Dean. And I thought—" He broke off, passing a hand over his face.

The Doctor was quiet for a moment, then, gently: "You thought what?"

Sam took a breath, turned and faced the Doctor. "I thought of them as my _Companions_," he said. "Like you have. I think...I think I thought I was...you." He looked away, swallowing. "It's...that's never happened to me before."

"No," the Doctor said. "I don't imagine it has."

"You said that what happened to me didn't make me not human," Sam said, finding his voice hoarse. "Could it have made me...crazy?"

The Doctor stood quickly, walking to him. His hands were in his pockets but he got right up in Sam's face, looking up at him. "You are _not_ crazy, Samuel. That's not what's happening. You did have part of my mind in your mind."

"I was thinking like I _was_ you," Sam said.

The Doctor shook his head, then looked down, frustrated. "My blood altered your basic neurobiology," he explained. "Made you quicker to create connections, more flexible. More malleable. It's why I told you to give what I gave you back to me. Well. One of the reasons why. But regardless, what I did was dangerous, and it's one of the things I'm sorry for. Your brain was trying to compensate for the fact that you suddenly had knowledge you hadn't gained through experience. It picked up on traces of my personality and memories and tried to form some logical explanation for your knowledge."

It took Sam a second for his brain (his stupid, _malleable_ brain) to notice that he had gripped the scalding coffee cup and was burning his palm. Instead of setting it down he anchored himself onto the sensation, and raised the cup to his lips. Hot cup, hot, bitter coffee, pain in his hand. That all made sense. Even if nothing else did, even if the freaking _alien_ he was talking to who was telling him his brain had tried to make sense of a situation by deciding that he was a Time Lord didn't make any sense, at least coffee made sense. He swallowed past the arsenic bitterness. "Is that...dangerous?" he asked. The Doctor frowned. "My brain being...whatever. Flexible."

"You realize nothing's changed, just because you know it now," the Doctor said slowly. "This has been your condition since you were six months old."

"There's lots of uglies out there that have psychic powers," Sam insisted. "Could my _condition_ put my brother in danger?"

The Doctor paused, and picked up his own mug of coffee. He seemed to mull Sam's question over as he sipped, made a face, and swallowed hard. "The mind's sense of self-preservation is extremely strong, and yours is no exception to that," he said. "But I understand what you're asking, and the answer is, I'm sorry, but maybe. _But_," he continued, cutting off Sam's impending cry of _what?_, "it would take an _extremely_ powerful psychic to take advantage of your state. I'm talking about a being of the kind of psychic ability that you'd be hard-pressed to deal with in any case, with or without your past. That, or the introduction, again, of a foreign, meaning extraterrestrial, substance into your system. My blood. Azazel's blood. The remnants of my psychic connection to you. It can't just _happen_, unprovoked, and it would take something _big_ to provoke it."

Sam held the hot mug between his hands, and went to the table. He sat heavily.

The Doctor didn't move from the counter. "Nothing is different, Samuel."

"Everything is different, Doctor," Sam said quietly.

"Well." The Doctor shrugged. "Suppose everything's _always_ different, isn't it? One moment to the next."

"Yeah."

The Doctor took another long sip of his coffee. "This is terrible," he remarked.

Sam laughed dryly. "You don't have to drink it."

"Didn't say I wouldn't drink it," the Doctor replied. "Just said it was terrible. Terrible isn't always bad."

Sam looked up at him, his eyebrow raised. "Uh, yeah, Doctor, that's kind of the definition of terrible."

The Doctor shrugged again. "Terrible can be bracing. Terrible can shake things up enough for you to change something. Terrible can make you take a new look at things. Like, for example, why do I keep drinking coffee? I always hate it. This coffee is terrible enough to remind me that taking coffee, no matter how picturesque, is a bad idea." He held the mug out like it was exhibit A. "See? Terrible coffee, valuable realization."

"This is the most obvious metaphor I've ever heard," Sam said.

The Doctor poured the coffee down the sink, and said over his shoulder, "He's a fool who accuses me of beating around the bush."

"So this is, what, pain is just weakness leaving the body?" Sam asked, perhaps with a touch more sarcasm than was strictly necessary. "Because if that was true, Dean and I—"

"Would be granite pillars of strength without the smallest hint of weakness," the Doctor said. "Yes. But pain is just pain. What you do once the pain begins to fade..._that's_ what's important." The Doctor finally turned and met Sam's eyes. "And the two of you are brilliant at moving on past the pain, Samuel. It's what you told me, just last night."

Sam was contemplating a reply when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned around to see Rose's bright smile, and couldn't help but smile back at her. Her blonde hair was tousled, her shirt wrinkled, and there were bruise-like rings around her eyes from all the sleep she'd missed over the past forty-eight hours, but she looked so _happy_. And he knew why. Her Doctor was awake, alive, okay. He'd had those mornings, where all was well because there was one person in the world who was okay. He wondered if he looked that happy, on those mornings. "Morning!" she said cheerfully. "Oh, coffee, thank _god_."

Sam looked at the Doctor, releasing the breath he'd taken in to argue in a slow exhalation. The Doctor looked back at him, his expression even and slightly sad. Which seemed like kind of his default. "Coffee's terrible," the Time Lord mentioned to his Companion.

"Oi, what do you know about it," Rose retorted automatically, not looking up as she poured herself a mug full. She raised it to her lips and closed her eyes as she sipped it. "Ah," she said, content. "Can't find coffee like Earth coffee!"

The Doctor leaned on the counter, listening with a quiet smile as Sam and Rose exchanged small talk over their coffee. Dean and Bobby woke up shortly after, filing into the kitchen in their turn. Once everyone had some coffee and breakfast in them, a comfortable silence fell over the room.

Sam broke it. "I guess you guys are going to head off now, aren't you." Not a question. Not _quite_ an accusation.

The Doctor looked contemplative for a moment. "I suppose we are," he said. "It's more or less what we do."

Rose grinned around the lip of her mug. "Gotta say, this was an exciting way to spend a few months," she said. "Never thought America would be so...ah..."

"Full of demons?" Dean suggested.

Rose raised her mug to him. "Definitely didn't think it would be that," she said.

The Doctor waited until Rose was taking a sip of her coffee, and said, without looking at anyone in particular, "You know, if you wanted, my usual offer when someone helps me save the world is one trip in the TARDIS, anywhere, anywhen you want."

"Yeah?" Sam said noncommittally.

He felt the Doctor's eyes on him. "That's...not the reaction I usually get to that offer," he said, sounding perhaps hurt.

Sam looked up and saw that, sure enough, the Doctor's expression was one of hurt. He shook his head and said, "Doctor, it's...I'd love it. Dean, maybe not so much, because of the whole. You know. Flying thing. But seeing the Cygnus Loop with the two of you was incredible. It's just that we have a lot on our plate right now, and it seems like just up and going on a vacation is a little...irresponsible."

The Doctor nodded, smiling grimly. "I understand," he said. "Wish it were different. But I do understand."

He stood, and everyone else followed suit. He extended his hand to Bobby, who took it, and then grunted in surprise as the Doctor pulled him into a tight hug. "Thank you for everything," the Doctor said. Bobby made a choked, startled noise in response, and the Doctor released him. "I mean it," he said. "Thank you."

"Y're welcome," Bobby muttered. His expression softened as Rose embraced him, and he patted her on the back. "Take care, sweetheart."

"You too," Rose said.

She stepped away from Bobby, and walked over to Dean, rising up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck. He held her, and Sam saw the conflicted emotions crossing his brother's face. "Take care of yourself, Dean," she said softly.

"Yeah," Dean murmured. "You too, _Jackie_." She pulled away, startled, but smiled when she saw the smile on Dean's face. She drew him back into a hug again, gripping him tight his expression turned impatient. "Jesus, I know you have a time machine but you are draggin' this out."

Rose made a face at him, but let him go, turning to Sam. He opened his arms, and she ran into them. He had to duck down to hug her, and he smiled.

"You're gonna be okay," she whispered into his ear. "You and your brother. Whatever happens. You're brilliant. The two of you remind me of the Doctor, even without all that nasty business."

_Nasty business_. Sam couldn't help but grin. "Thanks, Rose. You and the Doctor, you're gonna be okay, too."

He looked down at her, and she smiled weakly at him. "I know," she said. "And I hope, when you're all done sorting out everything, you can take the Doctor up on his offer. Because there's some _brilliant_ things out there."

"Yeah," said Sam, "I bet there is. You enjoy it for me until then, okay?"

Rose nodded, and turned to look at the Doctor and Dean, who were saying their good-byes. The Doctor released Dean's hand, and looked at Sam.

Sam took the Doctor's hand in a firm grip, meeting the Time Lord's eyes. "Samuel," the Doctor began.

"Thanks," Sam said. The Doctor fell silent. "I mean it. For everything you did. For not giving up on us. Thank you."

The Doctor laughed softly. "I could say the same to you," he replied. "Thank you for your trust, and your forgiveness, despite everything."

They stood for a moment, still in their handshake, until the Doctor did to Sam as he'd done to Bobby and swept him into a hug. It had a slightly different effect, given that Sam had a good four inches on the Doctor, but Sam felt something shift in him. He held onto the Time Lord tight.

"If anybody can beat this, it's the two of you," the Doctor said, in a quiet voice meant for Sam only. "I can't promise you it'll be easy. I don't know what's ahead of you. But I've met some of humanity's best and brightest, throughout all the years of your species' existence, and they pale in comparison, Samuel, they do. Be strong. Be smart. Be brave." He took a deep breath, and Sam stepped back. The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "And I'm sure we'll be seeing more of each other."

Sam frowned, alarmed. "_How_ sure?" he asked.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, and burst out laughing. "Not _that_ sure," he replied. "Not _I've been there already_ sure. Just...normal sure. You're the types that attract temporal anomalies."

"And that's like the Bat Signal for the Doctor," Rose added wryly.

They walked outside together, and Sam marveled again at how well the TARDIS blended in to its surroundings. He didn't know...maybe it was some kind of race memory, but there was something _right_ about it sitting there, with the Doctor in front of it with his Companion, fresh off of saving someone. He and Rose waved, and Bobby and the Winchesters waved back. Rose slipped her hand into the Doctor's, and they ran into the TARDIS together.

The sound of gears and wind rose around them, and the TARDIS faded out of existence.

The three of them stood there for a moment. "They're gone," Dean said.

"Yeah," Sam replied.

Bobby shook his head. "You idjits have the best and worst luck in the world, at the same time," he sighed. "Never seen two boys get beat up like you, but you meet one of the world's most infamous non-humans and come out of it _pals_."

"Well, you know us, Bobby," Dean said with a winning smile. "We're just so _personable_."

Sam didn't pay much attention to Bobby and Dean bickering as they walked back to the house. His mind was still on the TARDIS, its inhabitants, and all the revelations that blue box had brought into their lives.

All that had changed, but all that hadn't, too. He glanced at his brother, who was making an exaggeratedly offended face at Bobby, and who was still going to Hell. That hadn't changed. They wouldn't stop fighting...fighting Dean's fate, fighting the demons, doing what they'd always done. That hadn't changed, either. They were headed back to Bobby's house, his whole family together, even if the number of times that was likely to happen was running out. Family hadn't changed. It wouldn't. Not ever, regardless of alien blood and alien demons and fixed points in time.

So maybe the Doctor was right. Maybe just knowing didn't change anything. Or maybe it changed it just enough to renew his spirit, and his determination to save his brother, under any circumstances.

"Hey gigantor," Dean called, and Sam looked up. "What are you thinkin' about over there?"

Sam took a deep breath, and squinted up into the sky, where the Doctor was, somewhere, saving some other planet. He grinned. "Just that maybe terrible's not always so bad," he said.


End file.
